Google My Business Updates & Your Practice Listing

If you’ve closed your practice because of the COVID-19 pandemic, you may be thinking about marking your Google My Business listing to closed.

We don’t recommend you do this at this time.  This video will give you more details

Transcription of the video

Hi, this is David with the E-rehab.  I hope you are well in this time of crisis. I wanted to do a quick video about Google My Business listings because we’re going to get questions about this and we’ve already had a few.

You’ll see here an example of Coast Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine and Chico. You can see it on a phone here and you can also see it on desktop as well. You’ll notice the COVID-19 alert, which is necessary, but I’m not a fan of it being associated with your business listing. There isn’t much we can do there to change it.

What we have noticed though is if you go into your Google my business account, there is a link at the top. I’ll learn more with limited Google my business functionality due to the coronavirus and COVID-19. Click here for details.

There are three things we’ve noticed and then one big one that we’re getting questions about.

  1. The first is you cannot get new reviews.
  2. The second thing is you cannot respond to reviews.
  3. The third thing is, is that they have removed questions and answers in your Google My Business account.

The Most Important Question – Do I Mark My Business Closed?

The big one though is when people ask us if they should Mark their clinics closed because they have closed their practice in response to the crisis. Our answer is no.

Google reinforces this. If you click on this, learn more here. You can get to this page and you notice that they want you to do business edits. It’s gonna take them some time to verify new listings and they have removed the Q and A; but if you click here on this link, it goes to more specifics. What do you do if you have changed your hours?

They want you to update your hours. They want you to add in to your information under the info tab, that you have changes in your hours and they’re saying to create a post and then if you’re temporarily closed. They’re saying that they get information from elsewhere.

Basically they don’t have functionality yet that says they are temporarily closed in your Google my business listing. So that leads me to the next point – your INFO link in your GMB account.

If you wanted to click on that and you could go down here and you could change your information right here, but they also talked about creating a post.

So here’s what posts look like and what you do is you click add an update. And if I do that, I have that, uh, here. You would drag an image in there and then write your post where you could say that your, you things have been modified or you’re closed or when we get through this that, you would post that you’re open again and then you just simply click publish there.

In Summary

The question being, should I mark my business closed in Google my business? Do NOT do that. If you do, it could impact your search listings.

So, modify the information as stated above in the Info section of your GMB listing and/or create a post and put it up there under your Google my business account.

I hope this helps. If you have questions, let us know.

Images for You to Use on Your Google My Business Posts

Here are three images you can use to upload to your Google My Business account depending upon the status of your clinic.  Simply right-click on the given image and save it to your computer.  You can then upload it to your Google My Business post.

 

Inbound Vs. Outbound Physical Therapy Marketing Part 4

For the Most Effective Long-Term Strategy, Content Marketing is King

An essential recommendation that we’ve touched on several times throughout this blog series is to develop a better grasp of who is—and who isn’t—actively looking for a physical therapist, and how this should affect your marketing strategy. This is a universal concept that applies to all aspects of marketing your private physical therapy practice, so it’s worthy of a closer look.

To develop a clearer picture of the whole of society and how much the average person is considering the prospect of physical therapy, it helps to get acquainted with the 6-7%, which was created by marketing consultant Chet Holmes in his book, The Ultimate Sales Machine. The pyramid breaks down the consumers in any market into five categories based on their interest levels, and for physical therapy marketers, your audience looks like this:

  • About 3% of people are interested in starting physical therapy and looking to set up their first appointment right now
  • About 6-7% are open to the idea of seeing a physical therapist, but not actively pursuing it or looking into options
  • About 30% are neutral, meaning they probably have not given any thought to undergoing physical therapy, but might be interested in it
  • About 30% are pretty sure that they are good “as is,” and don’t need physical therapy, but they haven’t completely ruled it out
  • About 30% are certain that they don’t want or need physical therapy

It’s a Conceptual Model but Fairly Close to Reality

These statistics may appear to be discouraging, but they should serve as an important reality check. If you buy into this model, it shows that only about 10% of the public is actually receptive to physical therapy as a solution to their pain, and only 3% is at the point where they are actively searching for a therapist or practice to begin treatment with.

The research supports this as well:

  • Only about 7-8% of lower back pain patients see a PT, but the value proposition is clear [1]
  • Clinical guidelines suggest that seeing a PT early on for neck pain is of high value. [2]
  • Yet, referrals to physical therapy are declining according to some research. [3]

Example Patient in Your Community with Low Back Pain

Let’s consider an example. Let’s say that someone in your community has back pain.  Who do they think of as the primary care providers for back pain? Most would say a medical doctor and others a chiropractor.  The evidence supports this.  This is the reality of most communities.  Physical therapy is lost in obscurity.

How does a practice rise out of obscurity and become a treatment option for the average consumer?

Enter Content Marketing – An Affordable Method that Can Pay Off Down the Road

The remaining 90% of the people discussed above, is a portion that needs to be nurtured in the long term. Since these individuals don’t generally care much about physical therapy—or downright don’t want it—you need to work on fostering a relationship that will help them get to know, respect, and eventually trust you. With this approach, when the time comes that they do need a physical therapist, they’ll be far more likely to keep you in mind.

This is why traditional marketing may not be as effective for this population. Instead, you should focus your efforts on content marketing.

Content marketing is defined as follows: Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. [4]

Online or Offline – Content Marketing Applies to Both

Content marketing can apply to both your online and offline strategies. When devising a content marketing plan, it may help to follow the 80/20 rule:

  • 20% of your content should be clearly self-promotional
  • The other 80% should be useful, interesting, and educational, thereby benefiting anyone that reads it

Educational content that covers a range of topics related to:

  • Obtaining value from healthcare providers,
  • Conservative care options
  • Sports health,
  • Fitness,
  • Exercise, and
  • Nutrition

Many of these topics will be immediately helpful to potential patients/readers and will also stand the test of time. In addition, by showing your audience that you are an authority source that provides reliable answers to some of their most common questions, they’ll keep coming back to you in the future to read more. This will in turn will help build trust and will likely place you in the running if—and when—a time comes that physical therapy might be needed.

We hope this series has shown that there is an abundance of options for both inbound and outbound marketing, and there are plenty of benefits of both approaches. Utilizing some of each and diversifying your tactics will likely yield the greatest return, but what works for your private physical therapy practice will be completely unique to your goals, message, and budget.

If you’d like some assistance in navigating this process, we are happy to help. Contact E-Rehab today to learn more.

Inbound Vs. Outbound Marketing Part 2: Outbound Helps You Cast a Wider Net

In our last blog, we showed you what an inbound marketing campaign can accomplish and walked you through the key steps needed to execute these types of strategies. An inbound approach can work incredibly well once someone finds you on the internet, but as we’ve pointed out, this isn’t always easy or likely. It also takes time, and lots of patience, which some private physical therapy practice owners may not have.

Enter Outbound Marketing.

Also referred to as “traditional marketing” or “push marketing,” outbound is more about casting a wide net with strategies that find your patients, rather than hoping that they somehow find you. It gives you more control over how to establish the first point of contact, and is, therefore, more direct and immediate than most inbound strategies.

Example Patient with Neck Pain

One way to understand the primary benefits of an outbound strategy is to think about the behaviors of an average individual who has neck pain. If this person is like most people with neck pain, he or she is probably not actively looking for a physical therapist, and may not even be aware that the option is available.

An inbound strategy probably won’t work unless they happen to be searching for terms related to neck pain and your area and you have pages that rank for these terms.

An outbound approach, on the other hand, is far more likely to bring your practice front and center through the use of advertising and other broad marketing tactics.

Getting to know the best outbound advertising options

Advertising is the most common and reliable form of outbound marketing, and there are numerous options available today. A selection of some that will be worth your time follows:

  • Paid Banner Advertising: this is essentially any type of advertising that’s used in a search engine; specific search terms are not always necessary, so these ads can pop up regardless of what’s being searched for
  • Social media advertising: these ads are paid for on specific social media sites, and are helpful for increasing awareness of your practice, better understanding your audience, and boosting your reputation; in general, it’s also less expensive than search engine ads
    • Facebook advertising: one of the most popular options; ads are easy to create and can be segmented by interest, age, and other variables
    • Instagram Ads: Instagram includes a number of highly engaged users, making your ads more likely to be seen by a larger number of individuals; these ads are also connected with those on Facebook
    • Twitter Ads: promoted Tweets can use keyword targeting to go after specific individuals, and you only pay when you’ve achieved your marketing objective
    • LinkedIn Ads: this type of advertising isn’t to generate new patients; rather, LinkedIn ads are typically used to attract new professional talent. While they are generally more expensive than on other social media platforms, they may yield better overall results than sites like Indeed.

physical therapy outbound marketing

Pros & Cons of Physical Therapy Outbound Marketing

As you can see, there are pros and cons to both inbound and outbound marketing, and that’s why we believe it’s best to spend time on each and find a balance that works for your practice and your budget.

Outbound marketing is usually far more expensive that inbound and also tends to be short-lived, but if you’re looking for more immediate results and have the funds, it’s certainly an option worth pursuing. In our next blog, we look into the role offline marketing can play in today’s times.

Outbound Marketing – A Great Way to Reach Referring Physicians

In conclusion, outbound marketing has its place. It’s often underutilized by physical therapy private practices and a quick piece of advice – if you still get patients from referring physicians, we definitely recommend you use this marketing strategy to reach them.

We offer a physician newsletter that is ideal and affordable for any practice. Contact us for more information.

References:

https://databox.com/outbound-marketing-tactics

35 Physical Therapy Blog Resources

Publishing content on your physical therapy website may often feel like a daunting task.  Figuring out what to write about, how best to convey your message, and what elements to include in order to rank and attract readers can take some time to navigate.  This tends to ring especially true for newcomers, but even seasoned bloggers and content creators can run into snags of their own.

If you are blogging, over time you may struggle to find ways to keep coming up with fresh ideas for content that will continue to engage readers without growing stale.

Coming Up with Physical Therapy Blogging Ideas Can be the Tough Part

If you handle any of the physical therapy marketing for your private practice with blogs or other content, you’ve probably run into issues like this in the past (or you may be in that position right now, which is what brought you to this page!)

It goes without saying that there’s so simple way to guarantee that you’ll never run out of ideas and always post the most riveting content, but it will be a major benefit to have some trusty resources to consult for topics, guidance, and writing assistance.  Below are 35 essential tips and resources to help you become—or remain—an established physical therapy blogger in the long term:

Blog Topic Ideas

  1. Statistics summary: write a post loaded with important statistics about physical therapy from across the industry, with commentary about how these statistics affect readers
  2. Study summary: find a study that highlights the benefits of physical therapy and do a brief summary of its findings and why they show physical therapy is best
  3. Success story: write about a patient at your practice that experienced a positive outcome after completing treatment; success stories are an incredible way to promote your practice, and you’ll never run out of them so long as you continue to treat patients
  4. How-to guides: teach your readers how to get involved in a new exercise or activity with a step-by-step guide
  5. Injury spotlight: pick a common injury or painful condition and explain why it occurs, what it feels like, and why physical therapy is the best treatment for it
  6. Sport-specific injury guide: select a sport and describe the most common injuries that athletes experience, and how physical therapists can help patients return to activity
  7. Body region injury guide: along the same lines, pick a joint or region (e.g. knee, back, ankle) and provide some details of what injuries occur most frequently, and of course, what physical therapy can do to address it
  8. Services spotlight: promote a unique service you offer that’s not found at most other physical therapy practices, like the Graston technique, aquatic therapy, or dry needling
  9. Seasonal blog: discuss how the current weather relates to exercise habits or common problems and provide tips on how to remain active while avoiding injury
  10. Countdown list: readers love lists, so try creating a blog on “The 5 best stretches for shoulder pain” or “The 8 most common mistakes made when training for a road race”
  11. Physical therapy news: link to an important development in the physical therapy industry and explain how it could affect patients in the future

Resources for physical therapy blogging or health topics to write on

General

  1. Feedly: one of the many websites available for organizing RSS feeds
  2. Healthline
  3. Health Essentials from Cleveland Clinic
  4. WebMD
  5. MedicalNewsToday
  6. MayoClinic
  7. The New York Times: Health
  8. NIH

Physical therapy-specific

  1. APTA: great for industry-related news and developments
  2. ChoosePT: APTA’s consumer-focused website (formerly MoveForwardPT)
  3. PT in Motion: APTA’s monthly magazine for physical therapists
  4. GetPT1st blog: loaded with topics for physical therapists and patients
  5. Evidence in Motion blog: industry-specific blog geared more towards physical therapists
  6. Physiospot
  7. The Physical Therapy Advisor
  8. Athletico Physical Therapy blog

Resources to improve your writing and posting skills

  1. CoSchedule: analyzes your headlines to ensure you’re using your words wisely
  2. SEOPressor: a WordPress plugin that assists with search engine optimization (SEO)
  3. XML-sitemaps: free service that creates a sitemap for your website, which helps search engines better scan each of your pages
  4. Hemingway Editor: a grammar service that helps you improve your writing by avoiding sentence that are too long or wordy
  5. Grammarly: another helpful grammar service to assist your writing
  6. Quick and Dirty Tips: website that provides grammar tips and answers to your questions
  7. Portent’s Content Idea Generator: enter a keyword and get topic ideas at this website
  8. Hubspot: another helpful topic generator if you need to come up with new ideas

 

In our next blog, we discuss why all your content should include a call to action that will keep readers engaged with all your online accounts.

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

physical therapy positioning

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 3: Look to the marketing hourglass and patient journey for opportunities

When it comes to laying out an effective physical therapy marketing strategy, it helps to have a conceptual structure to serve as the backbone for decision making. Figuring out how to formulate this structure can be challenging, but one smart guiding principle is to follow the shape of an hourglass to understand various thoughts patients go through when choosing a PT private practice.

For a long while, business owners and marketers were told to focus on the idea of the marketing funnel. To make matters more confusing, enterprise companies, marketing experts, and gurus have come up with different types of funnels.  Generally, a funnel is a concept that you conceptually describes the large target group of people that might be interested in your services (the top or largest end of the funnel), and then describes the thoughts, steps, or processes prospective patients go through…with people walking in the door, and doing business with you, being down toward the bottom of the funnel (the small end) where they become customers, clients, or patients. Many funnels include retention, repeat business, and referrals also down at the small end of the funnel.  The problem with this concept is that this concept doesn’t do enough to emphasize the importance of great customer service and the future ramifications as a result of delivering great care.  As John says,

“Of course, the funnel concept won’t ever go away, but about ten years ago I defined what I think is still a much better approach – I call it the Marketing HourglassIt borrows from the funnel shape but turns it on its head after the purchase to help intentionally account for the idea of creating a remarkable customer experience.”

The marketing funnel would usually consist of about three steps on the front end of the process—such as awareness, consideration, and purchase—but did not account for what happens to the patient after their initial evaluation at your clinic. On account of its symmetric shape, the marketing hourglass approach gives equal attention to both building trust on the front end and ensure an optimal patient experience from the moment they walk through your doors and all that follows.

The 7 steps of the hourglass to shape your physical therapy marketing ideas around

Before constructing your marketing hourglass, you need to take stock of how your physical therapy practice comes into contact with prospective patients through various touchpoints, and then try to map the journey that would lead them to call your clinic for their first visit. Once you have a good idea of these points, you can begin crafting your marketing plan by following these 7 steps of the marketing hourglass approach:

  • 1. Know: try to understand how most of your prospective patients will first hear about your practice, whether that be through an online ad, referral, or something else.
  • 2. Like: if someone learns of your practice they often will want to know more about you before they call to schedule or request an appointment online. This is where a great website with authoritative and up-to-date content comes in.
  • 3. Trust: before a patient chooses your practice, they will also want to see that they can trust you; the best way to do this is with reviews, success stories, and testimonials. Video is something that most practices are still NOT leveraging to build trust.  It’s something to consider.
  • 4. Try: we define trying physical therapy as the communication during appointment setup and the initial evaluation.  There are a number of opportunities to optimize these experiences. From answering the phone, what you say, being on time, evaluating the patient and communicating properly.  This step is where you sell the patient on your plan of care.
  • 5. Buy: the first step on the opposite side of the hourglass, this is the actual treatment phase of a patient’s experience; work to ensure a positive patient experience that exceeds their expectations; from proper goal setting, reinforcing progress, a good home-exercise program, and regularly checking in with the patient to make sure the plan of care is progressing as expected…these are all areas you can work on at this stage.
  • 6. Repeat: after ensuring that the patient had a positive first experience at your practice, shift the focus to follow up. After they have completed their plan of care, how are they doing on their own. Follow-up letters, phone calls, and regular offers to come back can help here.
  • 7. Refer: you know who your patient ambassadors are… you know, the ones that love you, the ones that you made a significant change in their life.   When these patient views your practice in this positive light, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to refer you to others by creating tools they can access through your website or elsewhere.

Another Way to Look at Your Physical Therapy Marketing – The Patient Journey

The marketing hourglass is a great way to visualize the process that patients go through.  Another way to visually describe this is the patient journey.  While there are dozens of touch points, one way to look at it is by asking yourself, “What online marketing technologies can I use to connect with prospects and patients through the journey.”  This graphic we created might help you visualize some of the opportunities.  We tied it into the marketing hourglass as well.

What are you doing to optimize your marketing?

Take a look at the above and see if you have any real blind spots.  What can 2-3 things can you affordably and effectively do to get people into the hourglass and optimize their experience as they go through it.

If you’re looking for additional assistance or other physical therapy marketing ideas, we can help. Give us a call to find out what we can do for your private physical therapy practice.

Physical Therapy Marketing Tip: How to Use Micro-Influencers To Grow Your Practice

What are Micro-Influencers?

Micro-influencers are people with a distinct social media presence, typically between 1,000 and 100,000 followers, that are in your local community. They know a lot about your community and people look to them for recommendations and advice about what matters and what to purchase.

Since micro-influencers resemble more of a trusted friend than a slick salesperson, they have some serious marketing power that you should capitalize on.

The Data on Micro Influencing

A 2017 Consumer Content Report surveyed 2,000 adults in the US, UK, and Australia about their unique perspectives on the consumer buying process.

When it comes to engaging with a brand, it turns out that what matters most to 90% of Millennials is authenticity. And what do they consider “authentic”? Certainly not perfectly packaged branding.

Instead, people prefer to consult a trustworthy source to decide where to spend their money, and 60% of them find that content created by consumers themselves is where they can find it.

Furthermore, a study conducted by HelloSociety found that survey respondents were 3x more likely to follow an influencer than an actual brand.

What does this mean for you? That micro-influencing is a powerful tool to reach potential patients, no matter what their age or demographic.

A Powerful Tool in Your Local Market

We all know that word-of-mouth is the most powerful tool to win new customers. Well, micro-influencing takes it to a whole new level by combining word-of-mouth with social media.

Micro-influencers have “influence” because they’ve built a rapport with their audience and, in many cases, some of that audience is made up of a local community of followers. By connecting with micro-influencers in your area, you can create buzz and really raise awareness about your physical therapy services.

How to Find Micro-Influencers for Your Physical Therapy Practice

Ok, now that you know how powerful local micro-influencers can be, let’s discuss how to find them.

Here are three simple recommendations:

  1. Check out a micro-influencer online properties such as Facebook Groups in your neighborhood and the Nextdoor app.
  2. Search keywords and hashtags on Instagram, Twitter, or other social media channels to find influencers that fit your practice and have a local audience.  For example, #SanDiegoRunners or #HanfordSwimmers .
  3. Use Google to manually type in [YOUR CITY] + [PRACTICE SPECIALTY] + [BLOGGERS or INFLUENCERS]  and scan the results. For example, if you treat runners, you could search for “San Diego Running Experts or Influencers.”

Look for local influencers that have a good-sized general audience similar to your patient base and let them strategize creative ways to share your practice…that’s what they do!

Tips for Using Micro-Influencers

  • Invite them to try your practice “on the house.” If they love your physical therapy services, you may get some good (and free!) exposure as they could respond to your efforts by mentioning them in their Facebook Group or posting a “thank you” on their blog.
  • Reach out and ask if they are open to doing paid posts or shout-outs. Prices could vary depending on their amount of influence, so determine what you’re willing to pay ahead of time-based on what their influence could mean for your practice.
  • Let them be authentic… don’t try to guide their campaigns too much. Remember, your potential patient base is looking for genuine interactions with your practice, and the micro-influencer will provide just that.
  • Use a variety of micro-influencers. Rinse and repeat! The more positive exposure form multiple avenues, the more awareness for your brand. But don’t use them all at once or it will be very clear to your community that it’s a paid campaign, which defeats the purpose of using influencers for more authentic feeling marketing.

Your Turn!

It’s time to get off the fence and commit to putting in the time and effort to find micro-influencers that can drive you more business!

Use the tips outlined above to launch your first local micro-influencer campaign!

 

Physical Therapy Online Marketing – Focus on the Fundamentals

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.

Here’s what Moz.com has to say on the topic:

“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 ratings and reviews

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”.

physical therapy seo

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

physical therapy email newsletter example

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:

  1. It helps build trust. People like to see the providers that will be treating them and the clinic where treatment is provided.
  2. 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.
  3. It’s a great educational tool. Using video to in the following ways can be extremely beneficial:
    1. Help potential patients understand their condition,
    2. Share the services you offer,
    3. Share success stories and the experiences of other patients,
    4. Help patients understand what will happen during their first visit,
    5. 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

physical therapy facebook marketing

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.

Thanks for reading!

David Straight

 

 

Physical Therapy Social Media Marketing Tips

With just a few improvements, your social media profiles could become the crown jewel of your digital marketing strategy. By switching up your approach and committing to a higher level of quality, you could soon be generating more leads, revenue, and interest in your physical therapy practice with minimal effort.

The great thing about social media marketing is that it doesn’t have to take a lot of your time to work wonders. If you plan ahead and use social media to reinforce your other marketing activities, you can achieve huge ROI through both organic and paid social campaigns.

So, to inspire you to improve your social presence and go beyond expectations, try implementing the following five highly effective social media marketing improvements.

Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy Document

Writing down your marketing ideas matters. According to CoSchedule, professionals who document their planned marketing strategy are over five times more likely to achieve success. Also, 88% of people who set marketing goals actually achieve them.

Documenting your social strategy involves both high-level and low-level considerations.

On the high level, you want to include your overarching goals for social. You want to describe how social media fits within your overall digital marketing plan. You want a few guiding pointers for brand voice and the type of values you want to express.

For low-level strategy, consider how often you want to post per week or per month. Plan a budget for the next quarter. Describe publisher sources for shared content you want to write.

Getting all of this down in writing helps you stay focused and consistent. It also makes it easier to communicate your intended strategy to others, such as employees or contract marketers.

Most importantly, it keeps you from approaching your social media activities haphazardly. Having intention and purpose is the key to achieving better results.

Coordinate Social Posts With Specific Campaigns

If you want to push your social media marketing to the next level, try a couple of test campaigns. These campaigns should start with you posting about your expertise and in time and with repetition, branding yourself in your areas of expertise.  

Then, you should tie your brand expertise (i.e. clinical expertise) into special events, promotions or campaign pushes so that they can have an express purpose beyond “just posting because.”

For instance, if you have a promotional offer like a free consultation, your social campaigns can convert audiences into leads or customers. If you have an event, like a lower back pain seminar, you will be aiming to increase foot traffic over the seminar period.

Connecting social media activity to campaigns in this way ties them to concrete goals. Your performance can be benchmarked, helping you seek out ways to improve your next campaign based on past data.

For each campaign, create custom graphics and a variety of post ideas. For example, you can plan to develop a few beautiful photo-based posts as a way to turn heads on a platform like Instagram. You can also create a few strong call-to-action posts to generate interest and early signups on Twitter or Facebook.

Creating special, limited time campaigns like these helps you learn quick lessons and improve rapidly with your social media use. The data you generate and experience you gain gives you skills that make you better at using social media, helping you improve and accomplish your goals more consistently over time.

Create Content Marketing Assets and Landing Pages Just for Social

You can significantly upgrade your social media marketing returns by creating assets specifically designed to complement social posts.

For instance, you can create a lead capture landing page for specific target segments to use with targeted promoted social media posts. That way, your call to action can take 18-year-old college students to a different page with different appeals than your page aiming to convert 70-year-old retirees.

You can also create assets that you know will perform well on social, such as infographics. Infographics get around 41.5% engagement, on average, making them the content with the second-best ROI behind video.

Developing assets like these help connect your social media presence to customer actions that actually generate revenue. They also ensure you have a best-fit destination for each outgoing click to your website, as opposed to shoehorning a single “contact us” page link into every post or something similar. Since each asset is custom-made for social, they’re better suited to their individual purpose.

Invest in Professional Grade Social Video

Speaking of developing visual content with high ROI, now is the time to start considering using video within your social media marketing strategy.

Businesses that use video marketing generate 66% more qualified customer leads and earn 54% more brand awareness  compared to those that don’t use any video. Even more impressive, 77% of small practice owners who use video report significant benefits and positive ROI.

These assets get attention and shape the way people see your practice. They serve as a form of social proof for the quality of your services when they include live testimonials. They give you something to link to within other campaigns and to embed within your blogs. They also serve as brief sales pitches that can be far more convincing than any chunk of text.

For best results, plan ahead for when and why you want to use your video assets and how you can repurpose them in multiple ways for future campaigns.  

Need a Complete Online Marketing Strategy for Your Physical Therapy Practice?  We Can Help.

For a free, no-obligation consultation, you can contact us at (760) 585-9097.  We will discuss what you are doing know, your goals, and show you how we might be able to help.

Design & Development of Your Physical Therapy Home Page

We get a lot of questions from our clients about what should be on a physical therapy website home page.

Your physical therapy website first and foremost should be responsive – a website that adapts to or changes its shape and presentation in response to the screen that the viewer is looking for at your website on. A physical therapy website that’s responsive looks different on the smartphone versus a tablet versus a desktop.

Starting from the Top of the Home Page and Working Down

At the top of a physical therapy web site you can include what is called a “hello bar”. It’s a thin row across the top and is typically a different color from the rest of the website. It usually has an appointment request link and a link to your payment page where patients can pay their bills online.

Next is the main banner. In the banner on the left-hand side is where your logo is located and on the right-hand side you usually have your address with your phone number.

Moving down the home page, there is commonly a slider or a “hero photo”. A slider is a series of images that are slide across the home page and are very popular in a modern web design. It’s a graphic feature that is very pleasing and makes a great first impression…especially if you use photos of you, the practice owner. I recommend you have a picture of your team as one of the slider images. Then a photo you or your staff performing special neuromuscular reeducation exercises with your patients. Don’t put a picture of a clinician stretching someone’s hamstrings. Personal trainers do that.

Next consider having a picture of you educating a patient a about a condition. You can be holding a model like a spine or the shoulder, or the knee and talking to a patient about that body part. Another good photo to include is a picture of you performing hands on treatment. People like to go to physical therapy and receive hands on treatment and frankly, manual therapy is one of the things a physical therapist do best. Why not include it on the homepage slider?

It’s important when you have these slider slighter images moving across the page that you also have key messages or text overlying the pictures. You first of all want to get their attention. Include phrases about where you are located, your reputation, your clinical expertise. These should be short 3-4-word phrases on top of the slide images, that encourage people to choose you.

Next, moving down the page, I would suggest you have a row of patient reviews. Today, patient ratings or reviews, in the form of star ratings and testimonial reviews are very common. I recommend you have a row of these across your page. Use slider controls to enable viewers horizontally scroll through a number of these; have perhaps ten, twelve, or fifteen of them.

Below your ratings and review is where you want to have your primary message.

Your “welcome to the practice message” and additional content text goes here. I recommend you have a video that perhaps floats in the right portion of your text. This video should share information about who you are, your expertise, why people should use you, and should be presented by the owner or one of the partners. Make sure you have a call the action at the end of the video. Use YouTube to host this video for you, and of course this video should be on your YouTube channel as well. Use lightbox plugin to allow physical therapy website viewers to click on the thumbnail picture of the video and have it “pop up” over the top of your website’s home page.

Then, I recommend including your location(s) information. Make the photos or city names clickable links that go to the specific location(s) page(s) on your website.

Moving down the page, have a list include a graphic list of your services. Have web cards (squares or circle images) that people can click on to go to individual service pages where they’re described in detail.
Then you might consider including a row of blog excerpts. A blog excerpt is the title of a blog post and then the first two or three sentences.

In the next row on your website you might consider having a link to your store so people can easily clic over to it and buy physical therapy products.

Below the link to the store, you might have the badges of any awards that you’ve received from companies like the BBB, ZocDoc, local top ten awards, etc.

Next, you might have links to your lead magnet pages. Lead magnets are pages that require people to enter their name and email address and in turn you give them a white paper or some information about why they should come to your physical therapy practice.

Then, have a link(s) to your workshop landing pages where people can sign up to attend one of your presentations.

Finally, have a mega footer built for you at the bottom of your home page. Include your PT practice name, your address, and your phone number exactly as it appears on Google (this is called your NAP [name, address, phone number]). If you have just one location, then include your office hours, an embedded Google map, and then links to your social media business pages.  If you have multiple locations, then consider linking the locations in the footer over to specific locations like we have done in this example.

A Word on the Text or Copy on Your Home Page

Before I end this post, I want to go into some detail about the text or the words that you should have on your home page. Since the words are present to inspire the viewer to take the action of calling you, we will call this your home page web “copy”.

As people are scanning down your website and most other websites these days, it’s very visual. Therea are lots of graphics and image. But, we ultimately need to have some good text or copy on the home page.

What you want to do first is get their attention. Use text that stops them from scanning down the page. A common question I like to use is, “Did you know that not all physical therapy practices are the same?” That’s going to get their attention.

Then the next thing you want to do is arouse some desire in the viewer to choose you. Talk about the fact that your expert physical therapy services

1. Saves them money,
2. It’s fast and easy to get an appointment with you right now,
3. that your treatment is conservative, natural, hands-on, personalized, and customized treatment for them.

Tell Patients Exactly What They Want to Hear

The next section of the copy should pique the reader’s interest by addressing four important factors that patients are looking for when choosing a PT practice.
These four factors are:

A. Clinical excellence – your board certifications, your doctoral degree, fellowships, and areas of specialization.

B. Empathy – write about your caring staff and the fact that you’re a family-oriented practice and that exceptional customer services is one of your corporate values.

C. No Long Waits – mention that patients are not going to have long waits to get into your practice for their first visit or long waits when they come into your practice for treatment. Patients are busy and they don’t want to wait around for treatment.

D. Shared Decision Making & Treatment – share some information on the page about your treatment approach. Patients want to be involved in the treatment and decision process. they want to know what their problem is, how you are going to help them, how long it is going to take, an estimate of how much it is going to cost, and what their role is going to be in the recovery process.

Money always matters. Have a brief section on your website that might say something like, “We accept a variety of insurance plans, click here for details.” Then link over to a comprehensive list.

End Your Page Content with a Clear Call to Action

Finally, make sure you have a clear call action and don’t just put your phone number at the bottom of the page. Side note, for goodness sakes, don’t ask them to sign up for an e-book. The call the action on your home page should be clear and should be in a large heading, known to web coders as H1 or H2 tags. Consider using some language before the phone number to inspire a viewer to call you now.

Use were phrases like, “Don’t wait, call now.” Talk about a delay in starting physical therapy care may cost them more money. Perhaps indicate that getting into your clinic fast will allow them to alleviate the pain sooner. You might want to create a sense of scarcity by saying something like, “We are now accepting new patients.”

Make sure you give anyone that is browsing your website multiple ways to contact you. What I mean by this is don’t just put your phone on the bottom of the page, but also include an online appointment request form too.

There’s a lot to Consider on Your Physical Therapy Website Home Page

Above we discussed some ideas about layout, graphics, and copy that you might be included on your physical therapy practice home page. It’s important to have a good designer that can create a clean design and layout with responsive technology. Following the above concepts can go a long way to converting patients that are visiting your website.

If you want more information want about how E-rehab.com can help you with your physical therapy give us a call. We’ve been helping PT practices market their business online longer than Facebook or Yelp have been around.

We have the experience, the passion, and great customer care to serve you. Just check out our ratings and reviews and give us a call if you have any questions. You can reach us 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:

  1. full of quality information that visitors to a PT website might find useful,
  2. original content that isn’t copied from some other website or a graphic someone grabbed from Pinterest,
  3. representative of the services you provide (no point in blogging about personal training if you don’t do it),
  4. optimized for the search engines.
  5. 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

  1. Make sure you are writing for a specific audience that can use your PT services.
  2. Make sure you message is value-packed and entices people to take the next step in your funnel.
  3. 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.