Here are five features that your physical therapy website developer must include in 2022.
1. Define your offer above the fold.
This means that you should state clearly what you are going to provide a viewer of your website (i.e. prospective patients). What kind of offer to we recommend? It depends on the type of patients you serve. For the orthopedic practice, we suggest you include something about pain relief. 90%+ of the patients that come into your practice have pain, so you want to let them know you can relieve it.
2. Repeat Your Calls to Action.
Why is it that department stores have cash registers throughout their location? They want to make it fast and easy for your to check out. On your PT website you don’t know when someone has read enough to take the next step. Make sure you include your calls to action frequently as the reader progresses down your homepage.
3. Add an Outcomes-Oriented Image.
Patients are more likely to work with you if they can see themselves as a successful patient in your clinic. Include pictures of happy, smiling patients on your website so patients can see themselves in the story that you are telling.
4. Stack Your Value.
There are a number of factors that can persuade a patient to choose your practice. Make sure that you list your value propositions clearly on your website. Make them short and easy to read as well for mobile viewers.
5. Make Sure You Have a Click-to-Call Button
Take a look at your website analytics and in particular, the number of visitors to your website that are using smartphones. You’re likely to see that half of your traffic or more are seeing your website on their smartphones.
If that is the case, then you need to make it easy for them to call you right from your website. While most phone browsers will recognize your phone number and enable this. you can use the <tel> tag to make sure this is happening. Then make sure you test this.
Add in These Features to Better Convert Website Viewers to Patients
Too often PT practice owners are more concerned with how their website looks rather than how they communicating with potential patients. If you include the following features in your PT website design, you’ll increase your conversion rate without spending any additional money on marketing.
Need help with Your Physiotherapy Website Design in 2022?
Have you heard of conversion rate optimization? It is the practice of increasing the percentage of users who perform a desired action – hotjar.com
“How does this apply to a physical therapy practice, and does it really matter?” The answer is a resounding “yes”.
To clarify the above definition as it applies to you, the practice owner, conversion rate optimization is the practice of converting more patients that are considering you to initial evaluations.
Three Ways to Improve Your New Patient Conversion Rates
Again, to give you some context, we are talking about converting more prospects (warm leads that are one or two steps away from booking an appointment) into patients. Here are three fast and easy ways to improve this, with one of them, in my experience, being the very best.
Tell a better story that is consumer centric, not company centric. Take a look at the copy (the words on your website home page that are meant to funnel viewers to your call to action), on your website home page. Is it about the patient, their pain, their desires? Or, is it mostly about you, how good you are, & details about services that may never matter to the reader?
Take a look at your mobile website experience. Does it follow Google’s golden rules of being fast loading, super easy to read, and friction-free? Too many PT websites have long paragraphs that prospective patients don’t want to read. Moreover, it isn’t easy to scan, which just so happens to be the way many read websites, i.e. they scan them.
Finally, the Best Way to Increase Conversions – Add a tracking phone number, record your calls, and improve communication. This is by far the best thing that you can do. Do you know what your receptionist (who gave the first impression of your practice to a caller) is saying to patients?
Quick, True Story
I recorded calls for a practice once, and a prospect called with a TMJ problem wanting to know if PT was right for them. After they finished the call, the prospect undoubtedly hung up and was wondering if they had cancer. The caller went from pain in the TMJ to I might have a problem that could kill me. The receptionist had so badly mismanaged the communication that it undoubtedly hurt the practice’s reputation.
Quit Wasting Money on Expensive Marketing and Examine How Well Your Existing Marketing is Doing
Therefore, Take a look at your conversion rates.
Action Items:
Look at the text on your homepage – is it telling a memorable story that funnels people to a call to action (do you even have a call to action)?
Check out your website on your smartphone. Is it fast loading, easy to scan, and there are easy ways to take the next step in the buying process?
Get a tracking number and put it on your website and Google Business Profile (add it as an alternate number). Record some calls and use them as teaching moments.
If you need help with your conversion rates, and your online marketing, let’s connect.
Having worked with over 2000 practices, generated over 100,000 appointment requests and over 600,000 phone calls, we’ve continued to evolve our physical therapy marketing services based on data, feedback, patients case studies, and client wants and needs.
Below you’ll find four tips, based on considerable experience, that will help you develop a better PT private practice website and convert more prospects that are considering you, into paying patients.Here are some of our recommendations.
I. Put Some Time Into It – Provide Content that Prospective Patients Want
In a service business like physical therapy, people judge what they can’t see (e.g. the quality of your service) based on what they can see (i.e. a great looking, fast, easy to use, website with clear communication, is extrapolated by viewers, as a representation of the quality of your PT services).
I am just floored at the number of mistakes I see on so may physical therapy websites.Younger PT owners, that spend more of their time on social media than searching for services, often make these mistakes. They’re more interested in funnels and Instagram than the marketing opportunities that are right in front of them.
Here are some examples to name a few:
No attention to detail – misspelled words and inconsistent/inaccurate information,
Large paragraphs that never get read,
A practice website that make viewers hunt for and/or work very hard just to find their address & phone number,
Little to no use of quality media like service photos, video, or interactive educational tools,
Websites that were down in-house with little to no experience or strategic forethought.
Do you know how many people visit your website each month? Is it 100, 300, 500 or more?With those kinds of numbers, why would you do something fast, cheap, or get a website from a company that has no idea how the physical therapy market works?
Here are some basic things you need to do to address problems right away.
Think Like a Patient When Analyzing Your Physiotherapy Website
When someone visits your home page, the most visited page on your website, you need to tell a memorable story. Don’t make it all about yourself, understand who the real hero is…it’s the patient.
Have you ever thought about what’s on a patient’s mind when they are visiting your website?
What questions are they pondering?
Are they comparing you to someone else?
Are they simply wanting to know how to contact you?
Are they questioning whether the services they’ve been referred for are worth their time and money?
Try This Simple Exercise
Here’s a simple exercise you can do to answer these questions.Ask 4-5 of your patients if they visited your website and if they did, ask them open questions like:
What were they looking for and did they find it?
When did they visit during their buying process?
Why did they visit?
How could you done things better?
What did they like and what can you improve with physical therapy website design?
By simply putting yourself in the mindset of your website users and asking them a few questions, you’ll get some good insight about how it’s used.
A Word of Caution – Don’t let the tail wag the dog.Feedback from 4-5 patients is just that, feedback from an n=5. It’s a small sample and may not bet representative of the 200+ visitors that are viewing and using your PT website every month.
Make sure their feedback makes sense. For example, I once heard from a PT that they included summaries of social posts on their home page and patients loved them.Maybe this is true for some patients, but you might want to ask, “How many times did you visit our website?” to better clarify the first question.
Most won’t visit anymore than once or twice.They aren’t likely to re-read your home page content unless they are returning months or years later.
So, is it really that important to have a social media post feed on your home page? Maybe, but not likely.Will potential patients choose you still without it?
There isn’t a right or wrong answer.I’m simply suggesting that you consider the bigger picture when making tactical, online content decisions for your home page, beyond the feedback of a few patients.
II. Use Your Own Physical Rehab Website Photos (including PT, OT, Speech photos)
I want to share a quick story here, about a PT owner that spent $17,000 on her PT website.$17,000 – that’s a lot of money and a long time to recover your ROI.When I compared her website to ours, fundamentally & technically (I.e. speed, on -page SEO, etc.), they were very similar to what we here at E-rehab create for a fraction of the cost.
There was one main difference though – the photos.On the home page there were nice images of patients and staff, and each internal page had a service photo, and the staff images were well done too.Certainly, it wasn’t worth $16,000 more than what E-rehab charges though.
Here’s my point.It’s 2021.With modern iPhones, and Android phones, you can shoot phenomenal photos. Some movie directors have shot independent films only with iPhones.
Another reason to use your own photos is that prospective patients want to see you.Moreover, they want to see the smiling faces of patients like them.Remember, your patients are the heroes in your story and you are the expert, empathetic guide. Click here to read more about our StoryBran-based methodology recommendations for your home page.
Donald Miller mentions in his book Marketing Made Simple, that people that see themselves in they story and photos you are telling on your website, are more likely to buy.It’s called narrative transformation, and a big step toward accomplishing this transformation is including your own photos.
NOTE: there are times when a stock photo can do the job almost as well. Images from product vendors about your aquatic equipment or how a high intensity lasers works are a couple of examples. However, it’s always best to use your own photos.
Take an extra few minutes to take your own photos. It will be a simple way to gain a competitive advantage over many of your physical therapy private practice website competitors….and you certainly don’t need to spend $17,000 to get it done.
III. Mobile Optimize Your Website to Help Execute Other Online Marketing Strategies
When we look at the analytics across hundreds of PT websites, we see that about 50 percent of your visitors are on smartphones.Check your web analytics (we provide those to all of our customers at no additional cost), and you’re likely do see the same.
As I mentioned above, I’m just floored at the lack of quality and the mobile user experience on so many PT websites.Often they look poor without any attention to design detail. Often the content is long, run-on paragraphs that are really hard to read.
I’ve seen the converse as well.Wix or Squarespace websites that have little to no content at all.When I question the current owner about this, I’ve heard more than once, no one wants to read stuff on our website.My counter question is, “Tell me the average age of your patients?”
It’s almost always people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, or older. They indeed want to read a memorable story about you to find out if you are an expert, do you have a caring staff, do you treat their problem, have others had with their diagnosis had success?The take-home message here is you need to match the right type of media (i.e. a good website) with your market (your average users).
Other common problems on mobile sites:
I’ve seen videos that run off the page,
No click-to-call functionality or mapping functions,
No facilitation of reviews or social following
…all important functions that your mobile optimized website should offer its users.
So, take a look at your website on iPhone and Android devices.Does it represent the quality of the physical therapy services that you deliver or does it fall short?
You can’t afford to make this mistake, especially if you are competing agains the large corporations that have spent 5-figures on their website and have full-time staff members that oversee their design, form, and function.
IV. Have More Than an Online Brochure – Differentiate Your Practice
Here’s the stereotypical physical therapy website. On the home page is one of two kinds of content.
1. The “Our Mission” Content – it’s all about the practice, doesn’t tell a story, is often brief with trite statements like “we are the best…”
2. The “Misaligned Sales” Message Content – On this type of home page, you find workshops, some typical copywriting like the “treat yourself for free” ebooks (that suggest the practice would rather teach you how to care for yourself and spam you in exchange for your email address, rather than have you come into the clinic for care,) and then some mixed message videos.
Rather than sharing platitudes or dissuading your viewers from connecting with you, follow a specific formula – tell a memorable story, that funnels viewers to a call to action.
Realize that by the time a potential patient gets to your home page, they generally aren’t asking:
“Is physical therapy is right for me?”
They are probably asking themself:
“Is your physical therapy practice the better choice compared to the clinic right down the street?”
Take the opportunity to differentiate and educate with tools like:
A. A Nice Introductory Video.Shoot an expert interview confirming they are at the right website; or answer the question why you are the right choice and share what makes you better.
B. Social Proof. Make sure you have testimonials.You don’t need long paragraphs or 60+ of them on your home page. On the contrary, post short testimonials that answer the most common objections your view might have.Objections to using your practice might include the amount of time it takes for care, the cost, travel time, insurance coverage, appointment availability, and expertise.
C. A Differentiation Table. You’ve seen these when shopping for products like software.Create a table and by comparison, feature your strengths and expose your competition’s weaknesses.
D. Include a Chat Bot that Educates Rather than Misleads.I’ve seen chat bots that portray themselves as being a live service. Not only is this illegal in some states, they often push the viewer toward an appointment rather than educating them on the value of your physical therapy services. Half of consumers that visit your website don’t trust you. Rather thank trying to sell them on your PT services, educate them and motivate them choose you with good patient education.
E. Describe the Recovery Process.If a website viewer of yours has never experienced physical therapy before (and that might be 50-70% of new initial evaluations), show them what the recovery process is like. Share what they will be experiencing that will take them from pain and dysfunction to recovery and wellness.
In closing, I am shocked that even in 2021, so many small PT private practices completely miss the mark when it comes to online marketing.Only after wasting lots of time and money looking for the marketing “silver bullet”, do some circle back to tried and tested strategies to convert more physical therapy web viewers into patients.
Give the above tips a try and let us know what you think.
If you’d like help designing and developing your physical therapy website, give us a call.
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.
Most practices owners would agree, that in today’s competitive PT market, you need a great physical therapy online marketing to win. With the myriad of online marketing options, get-rich-quick, “be a 7-figure practice” schemes, misinformation, and time constraints, practice owners are often left very confused.
While every practice has different needs, we’ve found that there are seven fundamental strategies that practices should invest in to win online today. Focus on these, and you can beat the POPTS, HOPTS, and corporations…and in most cases generate some significant new business.
1. A Physical Therapy Responsive Website
Your website is hub of your of your physical therapy online marketing strategy, but if it’s not mobile-optimized, you’re simply missing out on patients that would like to easily connect with you on their smartphones.
According to our research mobile visitors account for over 40% of visitors to physical therapy websites. This is slightly less than the research site Statista, which indicates that mobile website visitors account for approximately half of the web traffic worldwide. In the first quarter of 2019, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 48.71 percent of global website traffic, consistently hovering around the 50 percent mark since the beginning of 2017.
In addition, Google has made it clear that it evaluates your website for a mobile optimized version, and if the site isn’t optimized for the mobile user, it’s likely to impact your search rankings. Google states:
“Mobile-first indexing means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. Historically, the index primarily used the desktop version of a page’s content when evaluating the relevance of a page to a user’s query. Since the majority of users now access Google Search with a mobile device, Googlebot primarily crawls and indexes pages with the smartphone agent going forward.”
If your site isn’t optimized for smartphone users, your search rankings are very likely to suffer.
NOTE: one tool that can be extremely useful on physical therapy websites, is chat. 79% of customers prefer live chat over email or social media for customer support due to its immediacy.
The problem with live on small PT practice websites is staffing the live chat. If you do have a request from a website viewer to chat and no one in your office is available or knows how to use a chat service, it can negatively impact your reputation.
A good solution is a chatbot. Physical therapy chatbots can proactively answer common questions and provide immediate answers to common questions and can help nurture users to the end goal of requesting an appointment. Interestingly, E-rehab.com chatbot data suggests that 1 in 10 chatbot users actually request an appointment. A chatbot should be included in your website and is an affordable way to convert more website viewers to new patients.
2. A Fast & Secure Website for Physical Therapy SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the marketing practice of engineering your online brand and website content to increase your website’s chances of appearing at or near the top of search results.
According to a recent study, the number one search ranking position earns around twice as many clicks as the number two. Once you reach position six, you start receiving clicks from less than 3% of the people who see your search result listing.
More specifically, “People will have a really hard time finding your practice if you aren’t ranked near the top of search results, and you’ll miss out on the lifeblood of your practice – new patients!”
It’s been reported by many SEO authority websites that Google’s algorithm contains over 200 factors that impact a practice’s physical therapy search rankings. Some of them are out of your control and others can be addressed to improve your search rankings. Two such factors are a. having a secure website and b. the speed at which your website loads.
“Google has indicated site speed (and as a result, page speed) is one of the signals used by its algorithm to rank pages. And research has shown that Google might be specifically measuring time to first byte as when it considers page speed. In addition, a slow page speed means that search engines can crawl fewer pages using their allocated crawl budget, and this could negatively affect your indexation.”
“Page speed is also important to patients that are visiting your website on their smartphones. If your web pages take a long time to load some of your website visitors will leave and search for your competition. Longer load times have also been shown to negatively affect conversions.”
Simply put, a faster-loading site will rank higher and when people click on your Google listing, they will have a better experience and are more likely to become a patient.
If page speed isn’t something you’ve considered in the past, we do recommend you consider it now.
3. Physical Therapy Reputation Management
Physical therapy reputation management has a negative connotation. Many think of reputation management as the process of limiting negative reviews, responding to negative reviews, and getting them removed from your online directory profiles (Google, Yelp, Facebook, Healthgrades, etc.).
Here at E-rehab.com, we use the term Reputation Marketing for physical therapy private practices. It’s the process of not only making sure you deal with negative reviews but also the systematic approach of capturing ratings and reviews and marketing those reviews to generate more new patients.
First, a quick reminder about why you should be building your online reputation.
People will drive past your competition if you use this form of marketing
It’s the second most trusted form of advertising
86% of consumers read this type of marketing
50% of consumers visit a local business after reading this type of marketing
79% trust this form of marketing as much as a personal referral
65% of patients say this marketing is moderately or very important
48% are willing to go out-of-network if you use this strategy
72% of consumers use this as the first step to choosing a doctor
Implementing a process this like this can have a profound impact on your bottom line. Making the active choice to be number one in your market, as evidenced by a large number of ratings and reviews, can generate 5, 10, even 20 or more new patients per month.
Unfortunately, many practice owners don’t understand or are unwilling to do the work to capture ratings and reviews. The good news is we’ve made the process very simple. Some of our clients are generating over 50 new patients per quarter. It’s one of the most affordable marketing opportunities for small practices and one of the only ways to compete with the large corporations and hospitals ( that will always have a bigger marketing budget than almost all small practices ).
Reputation marketing is also a marketing multiplier.
Not only does having a large quantity of ratings and reviews increase the likelihood that someone will choose your practice, they can also impact or enhance other areas of your marketing efforts. For example, if you are looking to hire a PT. We’ve heard a number of anecdotal stories from practice owners stating that they had PT employment applicants mention the practices “large number of reviews” as a factor as to why they considered applying for a job at the given practice.
Another example is the importance of Google ratings and reviews and your search rankings. As noted here in this 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors article, SEO experts agree that ratings and reviews account or approximately 15.44% of the “influence” on search rankings.
While some say it is “the way” to rank number one, this is simply not the case. Take a look at this search for “physical therapy costa mesa”.
As you can see here, the company with the most Google ratings and reviews (i.e. Ann Steinfeld Physical Therapy) does not rank number 1. Nevertheless, accumulating ratings and reviews is a positive factor that can help with your Google Maps/Three Pack ranking. It’s just not the only factor.
Nevertheless, Google ratings and reviews are indeed a marketing multiplier and physical therapy reputation marketing should be one of the top fundamentals you implement in your marketing mix.
4. Physical Therapy Content Marketing
As the saying goes, “content is king”. This means that good physical therapy content will have a positive influence on new business generation. Good physical therapy content can:
Help capture the attention of potential new patients,
Help define you as an authority,
Help you rank in the search engines for various keywords, and
Your physical therapy content can be used across a variety of online marketing channels.
Whether it’s a blog, videos, podcasts, or all of the above, your physical therapy content should be a great resource about the conditions you treat, the services you offer, and above all, make it clear that for most diagnoses, physical therapist directed care is a great first choice.
But content is also the way prospects find and evaluate your clinical expertise. Content that educates, answers questions, puts a patient/reader’s mind at ease and is generally helpful can then be followed by a call to action that can generate more initial evaluations.
Content is an important part of your search engine optimization efforts. Google loves to index new content, meaning that more frequent quality content is produced, the more likely your content is to rank for a given keyword search.
As marketing guru Gary Vaynerchuck famously said, “ We are all media companies now.”
Commit to producing high quality content on a regular basis. It’s a fundamental marketing strategy.
5. Physical Therapy Email Marketing – A System for Keeping in Touch
Once you’ve done all of the hard work of generating new patients, you also need a system to educate patients about the additional services you offer. Retention marketing or patient reactivation are the terms commonly used to market to past patients and get them back in your clinic.
Email marketing has long been a reliable channel to stay in touch with your past patients. Offering “good will” by providing quality educational information is an easy way to stay top-of-mind with your past patients.
It’s also a good idea to use other options like SMS if you have special offers like a free screening offer for past patients. Younger generations are rarely in their email inbox, preferring the speed of text messages and the social connection of messaging apps instead.
Regardless of the choice of technology, build your list and keep in touch to maximize the value of your marketing activities and the relationships you develop.
6. Really Want to Stand Out? Use Physical Therapy Videos
Video has officially taken over the Internet! According to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index, online video will account for 80 percent of all web traffic by 2019, up from 67 percent in 2014.
Ninety-five percent of people say they have watched an explainer video to learn more about a business, product, or service.
Why is video specifically a great choice for physical therapy practice owners:
It helps build trust. People like to see the providers that will be treating them and the clinic where treatment is provided.
You can deliver your specific message. Fact is that most scan web pages these days. With a good video, patients will watch the entire piece and will hear your entire message.
It’s a great educational tool. Using video to in the following ways can be extremely beneficial:
Help potential patients understand their condition,
Share the services you offer,
Share success stories and the experiences of other patients,
Help patients understand what will happen during their first visit,
Help patients understand why physical therapy should be their 1st choice
You don’t need a degree in film to produce great videos. Creating quality video is very simple with a newer smartphone and any number of apps to assist you.
If you really want to set yourself apart, physical therapy video marketing is a great opportunity. Most do nothing more than share exercises. There aren’t many (or enough) videos to describe why patients should be choosing physical therapy in the first place.
7. A Physical Therapy Social Media Presence
According to Verto Analytics, as of July 2017, we spent more than 41% of our online time on social media apps, which equates to an average of more than 25 hours per month per user. This number has stayed pretty consistent so far through 2019 as well.
Social media has its place in physical therapy marketing. The problem is that most potential new patients DO NOT look for a physical therapist on social networks. Let me illustrate this with a simple question. “If you are in need of a locksmith, an emergency dentist, a plumber, an orthopedic surgeon, or a physical therapist, would you search for someone on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram?” Most answer this question with a resounding “NO”! First this reason, social media marketing shouldn’t be your top priority. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do it or it isn’t important. When practice owners think of marketing, they think about generating new patients. Your social media presence might help with the retention of past patients when they follow you on Facebook, but if you want to generate new patients, posting content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and/or YouTube isn’t going to generate many calls or appointment requests.
That said, advertising, or paying to get your social media posts/content in front of your local audience can be an effective way to generate more new business. This type of marketing is an advanced advertising strategy though, and requires considerable time, money, and ongoing effort. It’s not a fundamental marketing strategy for most new and small PT practice owners.
I absolutely believe that practices must have an active social media presence. However, measuring ROI can be a challenge.
Conclusion: Focus on Physical Therapy Marketing Fundamentals
There are a number of online and offline marketing options. It’s easy for practice owners to get confused, waste money on bright and shiny objects…marketing tactics that promise riches, and lose focus on the basics. Don’t make this mistake.
E-rehab.com has been helping private practice with their physical therapy online marketing and physical therapy offline marketing for over 15 years and chances are, we can help you too.
Click here to request an appointment with me or call (800) 468-5161 to learn more about how we can help.
Physical therapy mobile marketing has grown to become an essential process that all private practices need to take advantage of. This is the result of more people spending more time on mobile devices, as well as the increasing competition of the medical industry.
In the world of physical therapy, evidence has shown that the industry is continually growing in demand as the population ages, especially baby boomers. With awareness of this reality, your own physical therapy practice may be starting to feel the pain of local competitors taking away your old patients and not know how to react.
Why Your Practice May be Struggling
If you’re beginning to feel like your practice is struggling or slowing down, there may be good reason for this. You possibly have dozens if not hundreds of competing physical therapy clinics within your city or state. With that in mind, you may be realizing how much more marketing you need to do in order to stand out above the rest of the herd.
Marketing physical therapy can sometimes turn into an uphill challenge because some believe that marketing content can only be general. If you think you don’t offer anything different from all of your competitors, try analyzing your practice a little more thoroughly.
Rather than focusing completely on you and your physical therapy practice, it’s worth remembering that paying more attention to the patient is now more relevant than ever.
[pullquote2 textColor=”#000000″]Rather than focusing completely on you and your physical therapy practice, it’s worth remembering that paying more attention to the patient is now more relevant than ever.[/pullquote2]
This is where physical therapy mobile marketing can work well in capturing a prospective patient. Much of this comes in integrating technology with marketing so they coalesce into something different and informative. At the same time, you want more direct communication with future patients to make your marketing a more personalized experience.
Integrating Apps into Your Physical Therapy Mobile Marketing
There isn’t any denying that using apps in the medical community has the potential for exponential growth. Apps are used in a variety of ways, some of which involve usage directly in the medical facility itself. However, they’re just as useful as a form of marketing on mobile devices.
A perfect way to provide both information and personal connections with your future patients is to provide a free app on your website. When people search for physical therapy on their mobile devices, they want information immediately. A free app is one way for those people to find that information and to refer to later for details.
[highlight3 textColor=”#000000″]The key here is to make your app as simple to use as possible. Simplicity in app design is peaking now for good reason. [/highlight3]
A case in point: mobile users want info in seconds before moving on. Here are some other tips to keep in mind when creating your app:
In your app, provide the most essential information users need, including content about your practice and what services you offer
Analyze all of your procedures and find something different from what your competitors are doing
Incorporate some educational content into your app so users get a sense of worth after downloading it
Another advantage of an app is that you can even integrate contact methods, including some in real-time; if possible, provide this through your staff so you can answer questions in real-time if a patient needs an answer to something they didn’t find on the app
Having a portal to social media through your app also allows conversations with users in a more personal way. Natural conversations that don’t use hard-sell tactics are the best way to prove your expertise without looking like a spammer.
Providing Directions on How to Find Your Facility
Another huge benefit of physical therapy mobile marketing is the ability to have GPS-like maps available so that patients know exactly where they are in relation to your clinic. By incorporating this into mobile ads on your website or app, patients who need to find a place in a hurry can do so in seconds.
More localized marketing is worth doing on the mobile platform to help you move to the top after possibly losing business to a physical therapy practice in your local area.
[note_box]For additional guidance on physical therapy mobile marketing, contact us here at E-rehab.com, where we can help you find new marketing strategies for growing or recharging your practice and attracting new patients.[/note_box]
A crucial part of physical therapy website design is providing information patients really want to know about rather than reading mere sales tactics. When prospective patients seek out physical therapy, they want to know what sets you apart from everyone else. Ultimately, most of those people likely have serious physical problems and don’t want to spend hours of time deciding between physical therapy clinics that look too much alike.
One way to set yourself apart is providing a library of educational information on your site that’s easily organized under categories. Under each category, you can bring a comprehensive list of what you do, what your mission statement is, plus answering pertinent questions most patients ask.
Here at E-rehab.com we’ll help you put this all together utilizing the best in multimedia so a first-time visitor gets a complete picture of who you are within minutes.
Creating a Q&A Section
One of the most essential elements in a menu providing information is a basic Q&A section answering the most pertinent questions about you. However, if you’ve ever been in the shoes of a patient, you know not every question is easily answerable in a Q&A. Try to think more thoroughly about what you’d want to ask and place the question and answer there. The more obscure the question, the better since someone will inevitably ask it eventually.
When creating the Q&A, organize it alphabetically or by subject for faster reference. In a mobile culture, especially, many patients are probably reading this on their mobile devices. If they can’t find information in minutes (or even seconds), they’ll likely give up and go somewhere else.
Also, when providing answers in your Q&A, be thorough in the answers. Provide information you can’t find on a Google search so patients know you went to more work for their benefit. One thing patients won’t warm to is overly simple, pat answers.
Providing Information on Individual Procedures
Most people searching for info about physical therapy want to know what type of techniques you provide for various physical ailments. Again, creating categories for each condition is a smart way to organize this information so someone doesn’t have to search on your site to find something.
Under each category, mention any innovative techniques you bring to physical therapy that few others are doing. Be thorough with the information like you were with the Q&A, especially under categories that are the most typical. Physical therapy for back problems are quite common, as are techniques to help those recovering after accidents or surgeries.
Indicate exactly how long each procedure takes and what the best results are. It’s here where you can provide a separate library of videos that showcase exactly what you do.
Creating a Library of Short Videos
When creating videos about your procedures, being as transparent as possible is essential in an era where we want facts about everything. Creating a video series is also a good idea so you break down a particular physical therapy technique into multiple, short segments.
With patient approval, try creating short videos showcasing the physical therapy taking place. By showing one session in real-time through a series of videos, you give a sense of actually being there, how patients react, and what the immediate results are.
End your video series with testimonials from those patients and how they felt after one or several physical therapy sessions. This is the best information your first-time videos can have and tells so much in a mere minute. Nevertheless, your textual information is there to complement the videos. Add detailed images of inside the body showing how physical therapy helps muscle tissue.
[note_box]
Your Website can be More than a Sales Tool
Patients check you and your practice out online before they come in for care.
Use your website as a digital tool to reinforce the information/education you have provided them verbally. A good physical therapy design should consider educational opportunities. E-rehab.com provides patient education, patient handouts, exercise videos, and more.[/note_box]
Contact us here at E-rehab.com and we’ll help you put together a library of information on your site that encapsulates everything for both mobile and desktop users.
Each day I speak with a client or prospect that wants to generate more business from the web. They are overwhelmed, confused, have been burned and simply don’t know what to do.
It’s not surprising when you consider all of the possible forms of advertising communication as diagrammed here in The Conversation Prism:
Your head really starts to spin when you think of social media:
By Brian Solis and JESS3 (https://www.theconversationprism.com/) [CC BY 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons
Here are E-rehab’s Physical Therapy Online Marketing Recommendations
1. Make sure you have a great website – it’s one of the most trusted forms of advertising according to Nielson.
2. Make sure you have a mobile optimized website. 30% plus of your physical therapy website viewers are going to visit you on a smartphone.
3. Send out an email newsletter (examples here). It is the cheapest, fastest, and easiest way to welcome, communicate, and stay in touch with past patients.
4. Ratings and Reviews – online reviews are the second most trusted and actionable form of advertising according to Nielson.
5. Create videos about your practice, your expertise, about patient reviews, and patient testimonials. Here are examples of reputation videos at Terrapin Physical Therapy’s YouTube channel.
6. Use Facebook and Twitter to communicate social signals to the search engines and to demonstrate your expertise and credibility.
7. Create a blog and optimize the posts to rank for common conditions you treat like MBF Rehab has done.
Invest in the Hub & Spokes
[info_box]You can spend hours every week chasing after the latest tech that might generate new patients. Our advice is to stop the madness and create a solid online marketing platform that includes the seven components above. We call it the Hub & Spoke Model. Your website is your hub of online marketing and the other components are the spokes. Invest in these and you will build your brand and develop more business from community members that have a need for PT.[/info_box]
Google Warning Those without Mobile Optimized Websites
Physical Therapy Mobile Websites (also called Mobile-Optimized) are Now a Must for PT Practices
Are your prospects and patients having a bad online experience when they visit your website? If you don’t have a mobile optimized website, about 30%-40% probably aren’t happy. In raw numbers, that could be 100 or more visitors each month. Have you looked at your web statistics lately? I bet that at least 25% of your website visitors are on mobile devices. Take a look at this graphic here that shows website traffic over a 90 day period…over 406 users have visited this 3-location practice in the last 90 days.
This is What They Saw…Ouch. The Viewer Has to Pinch, Zoom, Scroll, and Struggle to Find Your Phone Number, Map, Etc.
How to Make Patient Interaction with You Online, a Great Experience
When patients contact a practice to schedule a new evaluation or treatment session, they do it primarily by phone.
What you may not know is that those same prospects and patients (406 of them as noted above) search for you on the web before they make a call. This is a great opportunity for you to make it easier than your competition to connect with you. How? With a mobile optimized website. A mobile website is an approach to web design aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones). 1. We would argue that Wikipedia’s definition of a responsive website better fits that of three different types of mobile optimized websites which are described below:
1. Adaptive -Adaptive design is more like the modern definition of progressive enhancement. Instead of one flexible design, adaptive design detects the device and other features, and then provides the appropriate feature and layout based on a predefined set of viewport sizes and other characteristics. 2.
2. Responsive – Responsive design works on the principle of flexibility. The idea is that a single fluid design based upon media queries, flexible grids, and responsive images can be used to create a user experience that flexes and changes based on a multitude of factors. The primary benefit is that each user experiences a consistent design. 2.
3. A completely separate website – This development principle is primarily one based on ease of implementation. The idea here is that there is a completely separate website that exists, in many cases, on a separate web server. A user agent detection script senses that a request is made from a mobile device and then redirects the user to the separate mobile website. The primary benefit is both ease of implementation and they are cheap.
Regardless of the type of mobile website you have, there are clear advantages to having one as I outlined here in this blog post. However, now Google is stepping up the pressure on PT practice owners and telling them, “Hey, you better have a mobile optimized website, or else!” It is well summarized in this article by Searchengineland.com:
[warning_box]Google is sending mass notifications to webmasters who manage websites that are not mobile-friendly. These notifications contain the subject “fix mobile usability issues found on…” It then goes on to explain that these sites have critical mobile usability errors on 100% of the pages on the site and thus the pages will be “displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users.” These notifications are being sent via Google Webmaster Tools and via email. It is also being sent to sites that are simply not mobile friendly at all and typically, the webmasters know their sites are not mobile friendly. What we have here is Google reminding these webmasters their sites are not mobile-friendly and issuing a warning that the pages won’t rank well in mobile search.[/warning_box]
Here’s an example of the email message with the domain in question removed:
This is the email that Google sends to webmasters telling them they need a mobile website.
Notice their language, “These pages will not be seen as mobile-friendly by Google Search, and will therefore be displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users.” In my opinion, this could be interpreted to read, “If you don’t have a mobile optimized website, you won’t rank as well when people search for you on their phones.”
It’s Not All Negative Though…
There are advantages to having a mobile website with respect to your Google search engine listings, as well. Assuming you have a mobile optimized website, one of them is what your patients and prospects will see when they view your listing on a Google search results page.
Take a look at this screen capture of Google search results for the search “Physical Therapy Encinitas”. You have to do this on your smartphone of course, but what you can see is that there is a small notation that the landing page for the Google search result is “mobile friendly”. In other words, if you are searching with Google on your phone and you click on one of these links, the resultant website you go to is optimized for your mobile device.
Note: this Mobile-friendly tag only appears in the natural listings. Nevertheless, it’s a simple and easy way to differentiate your practice’s listing on Google from others…at least in the short-term.
[info_box]Take Home Message: As I have mentioned in previous posts here and here, there are big advantages to having a mobile optimized website. Now it seems that Google is making it almost mandatory for businesses to have a mobile optimized website. The good news is that a mobile optimized website is affordable, easy to implement, there are multiple options (responsive, adaptive, or a separate website), and as I will discuss in future posts, it’s a great way to promote your practice. Make sure a mobile optimized website is part of your physical therapy website development strategy![/info_box]
Google has made life much easier for physical therapy practice owners with the launch of its exciting new tool, Google My Business. It combines:
Google Places,
Google Maps,
Google Analytics & Insights
Google+
They are all under one easy-to-use dashboard and now, managing multiple Google accounts has never been simpler and the marketing advantages are endless.
What’s more, it’s free with no hidden costs. Here’s a quick summary of some of the services included in Google My Business:
Google+ (Google Plus):
Here’s a Google + Page that’s great for your physical therapy online marketing
G+ (Google Plus or Google+) This is Google’s answer to Facebook. It’s a social networking platform that allows you to share messages, photos, videos and links to your followers, directly from the My Business page.
Reviews: Google is the number 1 business review platform online. Google My Business has an entire review platform that gives practices a place to manage ratings and reviews in one location.
Google Analytics: You can very quickly and easily see all of your websites stats right on your business dashboard.
Insights: Insights gives you vital information on your visibility, engagement and trends in the market.
Maps: Manage your businesses location and information available on Google Maps.
YouTube & Hangouts: Video chats with key members of your physical therapy practice (think expert interview, patient testimonials, doctor interviews, etc.).
As mentioned earlier, this is all a free service. If you currently use Google Places for business or Google+ Pages to manage your online presence, you will already have been upgraded.
Not only that, but they are fine-tuning the My Business platform for mobile use too, and it is available in both iOS and Android.
6.5 Ways That You Can Take Advantage of Google My Business
Right Now and Quickly Overtake Your Competition
1. Be easily found on Google
Brand awareness is vital for any practice. How can you gain patients if people don’t know who you are or what types of services you offer? As a small private practice, you know how hard it can be to get high rankings on Google, especially if you’re in a big market with corporate and hospital brands.
So in order to create better brand awareness your first step would be to create an effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to make your site more searchable on Google. Research has proven (and you probably know from your own personal experience) that 75% of Google users never scroll past the first page. This highlights how without good Google rankings, you are simply missing new patients.
This is where Google My Business comes into play. When you create a My Business account, fill out all of the information Google requests, as it will increase the odds that your practice will show up on a Google Search, Maps and Google+.
You’ll need precise information about your location, your office hours, contact information, website address, email and fax numbers, and at least 10 pictures of your practice.
IMPORTANT: Make sure that the information you put on Google is the exact information NAP (business Name, Address, Phone number) that you have on your website and any other places where your practice is listed online. Consistency is very important in SEO and it can affect your search engine rankings if there are any inconsistencies.
The more information you add, the more Google’s search algorithms will work to help your search ranking.
Together, all of these features will give your patients an inside look at your practice. As a result, when potential patients are comparison shopping or simply doing a broad search for “physical therapy and a location”, they will be more likely to find your Google My Business listing and visit your website.
2. Connect with existing and potential patients
Not only can you manage your practice listing (AKA Google online phonebook listing), you can also manage your Google+ page from your My Business dashboard. It has taken a while for people to get used to the Google+ social network, and most people still prefer and use Facebook and other social media sites, but bear in mind that your Google+ business page increases the trust in your practice name and gives you significant boost to with respect to your Google Local SEO listings.
Google is always trying to provide its users with the best, most relevant experience. As such Google takes note of those who comment, shares or +1 your G+ page posts, captures this information, and identifies your audiences identity, activity and interests. From there, they can even deliver your Google+ page content to your followers in the organic search results. It’s truly amazing how Google provides users such a customized experience.
The other advantage of using Google+ is this; while other social media sites place a “no follow” tag on any link you post, Google+ doesn’t. So if you posted a link on Facebook for example, any links that you put in your posts (to your website in attempts to improve search engine optimization) will not influence your practice’s Google search results. Google, on the other hand, treats them G+ posts as web pages, which then helps increase your sites visibility and page rank.
But even without the SEO benefits, Google+ is also a terrific way to engage with past patients and build a long term relationship with them, which will increase the trust in your company.
Just as on any other social network, if you expect any kind of results on Google+, you need to be consistent and post regularly. If you have a practice blog, post the links on your page and ask your audience to read and share them. Post fun pictures of you and your employees so that your followers can get to know you better and have a clearer picture of who you are. It will encourage brand loyalty.
It is worth reminding you that any content you share should be relevant and interesting to your audience. You don’t want to keep posting promotional offers like Free Screenings or Discount Massages. The point of Google+ is not to push your physical therapy services on people, but to create a close-knit community, which will inspire trust and loyalty in your practice.
3. Hang out with your clinicians
If you are not already familiar with it, Google Hangouts are another great way to demonstrate your clinical expertise. You can hang out with up to 15 people at a time.
It’s the perfect way to build an online video marketing strategy for free. Use it to answer questions, share information about your new services or even give online demos of treatment.
4. Check the Performance of your activity
It’s helpful to post on Google+ and host Hangouts with your patients, but it could all be a waste of time and effort if they are not producing the desired results.
This is where the Insights tool comes in for your Google+ page and Analytics for your presence across all Google platforms. Both of these tools make it very easy for you to see how many views you’re getting, and you can even see how many people are reading your specific Google+ posts. It even gives you information on how many people have checked out your practice on Google Map searches.
5. Encourage and Respond to Patients’ Reviews
Whether you love them or you hate them, some patients want to leave a review about your practice. It’s part of online culture and people will either want to rave or complain about any experiences that they’ve had.
Side Note: the most common “bad reviews” are about patient billing and payment. It’s worth knowing this and making a little extra effort to make sure patients understand your physical therapy billing practices and policies.
Since online reviews are the second most trusted form of advertising, it’s worthwhile to make it easy for patients to post ratings (0-5 stars) and reviews (text comments about your practice). Chances are positive reviews will generate more business for you too, as many patients decide to make decisions based solely on what their peers have to say about your practice. Google My Business makes it easy by allowing you to claim your practice listing so that patients can add their rating and review by simply by Googling your name and clicking on the blue Google+ page link under your business listing.
The dashboard even makes it easy for you to promote the reviews on your Google+ page and monitor reviews on other platforms like Yelp. This will help you to easily respond to positive reviews, while professionally and politely dealing with any negative reviews. You will have a great pulse on the online reputation of your practice…certainly an asset for any physical therapy practice these days.
6. Create an AdWords Express Account
It probably won’t surprise you that at the bottom of the My Business dashboard, there is a button that will bring you to an AdWords account. After all, advertising is where Google makes 95%+ of its money.
The “express version” if AdWords, in my experience is very easy to use for private practice owners, but your ads will often show up for keywords that aren’t related to your business. This will result in unnecessary clicks and expense. Nevertheless, it still super easy to quickly create ad campaigns. It’s very similar to the right-side and inline Facebook ads, where you simply write your ad and set your budget and then Google AdWords will do the rest the work.
6.5 Stay Informed on Your Mobile Device
Just as 30-40% of your patients are likely to visit your physical therapy practice website while browsing on their smartphones, Google My Business will allow you to do manage My Business with either both iOS and Android apps. The mobile streamlined dashboard makes it easy for you to simply swipe through all of your tools and data, allowing you change dates, manage ads and modify your online presence from wherever you are.
Claim Your Page Today
With Google My Business, you will find all of the best Google tools are right in front of you by simply by logging into your dashboard. It makes management of your online presence easy.
[info_box]As you can see, Google My Business is a robust practice brand management platform; but, as with all aspects of online marketing, your web performance is only as good as you can make it. It’s very important that you include as much relevant information about your practice as you can. If it’s done right, it really can make a difference between your online success or failure.[/info_box]
If you are in any doubt or would like more helpful tips and advice on how to make the most from this great tool, please don’t hesitate to contact us today.
Who would have thought when Steve Jobs first introduced the iPad back in 2010 that it would become anywhere near as popular as it is today? All over the Internet, reviewers were openly mocking the tablet as a clumsy oversized iPhone.
Now a quarter of all U.S. Internet users own tablets and the figures are similar in other countries too. That means in the U.S. alone, there are 56 million people who are just as likely to encounter your site on a tablet as they would on their laptop or desktop. Your practice really can’t afford to miss the opportunity to talk to that many people, and if you don’t make your web design tablet-friendly, you will miss them completely.
Having a tablet-friendly website can mean a huge boost to your revenue.
Who are tablet users and why should your practice care?
Tablet users aren’t just a random selection of the online community. They are a discerning group of patients and are among the wealthiest because they come from demographics with the largest disposable income.
[note_box]Recently released stats give you an idea of the market your site could reach as a result of having a tablet-friendly site.
The gender of tablet users are pretty much evenly split—51% female, 49% male
About half of tablet users fall between the ages of 25 and 44
Just over half (51%) are college graduates
Just over half (53%) make over $75,000 a year
71% prefer to read their news as opposed to watching it—a huge boon for bloggers.
Tablet users are more likely to be employed full-time (62% of tablet users are employed full-time versus 41% of the general population)
In other words, tablet users are Internet-savvy, educated and financially independent. This is why it is so important to reach this demographic.[/note_box]
Another hugely important reason to target tablet users is the way they use them to view information online. You will often see people in waiting rooms, on public transport and in coffee shops and bars using their tablets. That is in addition to them using them before they go to bed or other opportunities when they just want to wind down. They are giving their undivided attention to the information that they are browsing, so they are much more likely to explore and shop online without any distractions.
How you can attract tablet traffic
It is the sites that fail to accommodate tablet-based browsing that will eventually lose out and get left behind, so if you want your site to attract these visitors, then you need to make your user interface as smooth and visitor-friendly as possible.
The most important part of attracting tablet consumers is to make sure that your web design displays correctly on both Android and iPad tablets. Users should be able to check out your site in both portrait and landscape mode. They definitely will not want to have to zoom or swipe their device in order to navigate around your site.
[colored_box variation=”steelblue”]Now is the perfect time to start attracting highly-connected, high-income consumers and make sure that your practice is doing all it can to keep up with the times so it prospers rather than getting left behind. If you need any assistance getting your site tablet friendly, call E-Rehab. We will be happy to help.[/colored_box]
Just because you can see your desktop site on a mobile phone doesn’t mean that it’s using mobile web design. Mobile sites are specifically designed for the small screen, with the needs of mobile users (your patients) in mind. A mobile-friendly site helps your practice connect with patients and drive conversions.[note_box]No business can afford to ignore the fact that more than a billion people primarily access the Web from mobile devices. Some of the most recent studies indicate that about 50 percent of people with a smartphone or another mobile device use mobile search on a daily basis. And 17 percent of mobile users make a purchase after performing a search.[/note_box]
To ensure it is mobile-friendly, view your website on your smartphone, and while doing so ask yourself these questions:
Content
Does the site fit the screen?
Almost 50 percent of your audience already uses a mobile phone as their primary Internet access device. In other words, you are losing nearly half your audience if you do not make your website mobile-friendly. Make sure content fits on the screen and can be read without pinching and zooming.
Is the content readable?
Do not try to cram all the information you provide on your website into your mobile site. Make it easy for your patients to read and bear in mind that they might be reading it in a place with low light.
Does the site load quickly?
Include important information like phone numbers, addresses and maps which would be useful to people on the move. Instead of giving a detailed description about your practice, provide a one-liner, which is good enough to entice your mobile audience.
Do videos and animations load?
Avoid using large, Flash-based video files on your mobile site, as most smartphone browsers do not support Flash. Instead, use simple images to improve the look and feel of your mobile website.
Is the site responsive?
With the rapid evolution of touch-based smartphones and tablets, touch has taken over typing. When designing your mobile site, use drop down menus, check boxes, and pre-populated fields whenever possible, so that your mobile visitors can navigate and input information easily rather than having to fill in long forms.
Images
Are file sizes as small as possible?
Use simple compressed images and keep them small for faster loading. This will improve the look and feel of your mobile website—but make sure all images used on the desktop are set to resize automatically to fit a mobile device’s smaller screen sizes. We can do all of this for you (see our contact information).
Is there a home page icon set?
Nobody likes to be confused. Help users navigate between levels with clear “back” and “home” buttons.
Do all images fit on the screen?
Use plenty of negative space and don’t let the images overcrowd the page.
Usability
Do the gestures work?
Use large-centered buttons to reduce accidental clicks and make sure that they all work. This will ensure that visiting your site will not be a frustrating experience for your patients.
Is it thumb friendly?
People use their fingers to operate mobile devices, especially their thumbs. Design your mobile site so even large hands can easily interact with it.
Are number and e-mail addresses actionable?
Remember to use click-to-call functionality for all phone numbers.
Are forms easy to fill out?
Use check boxes, lists and scroll menus to make data entry easier.
Would you stay on the site?
Try to be objective and try to look at this through your patients’ eyes.
[colored_box variation=”steelblue”]If you were shocked and disappointed by the results, or would just like to talk to us about making your website mobile friendly so that you don’t lose any more potential patients, we would love to hear from you.[/colored_box]
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