physical therapy marketing Archives - Page 2 of 3

Physical Therapy Clinic Marketing: Using Social Media to Learn About Prospective Patients

If you haven’t already noticed, we’ve reached a point where the process of physical therapy clinic marketing now has to include social media, almost by default. While this should hopefully be clear to you, what it means may be a little different from what you might expect.

Why You Need Two Accounts in Physical Therapy Clinic Marketing

Many experts are now recommending that if you own a physical therapy practice, you should create two separate accounts. One is a personal account for yourself that connects to another account, which is designed specifically for your clinic. You can see the logic in this, even if places like LinkedIn consolidate both of these onto one page. [pullquote3 align=”right” textColor=”#000000″]Nurturing relationships online is a growing way to generate leads on social media so you have a more targeted audience for your later marketing content.[/pullquote3] Nevertheless, you give yourself an advantage by having a personal account because it’s there where you can start conversations with prospective patients. Nurturing relationships online is a growing way to generate leads on social media so you have a more targeted audience for your later marketing content.

But when you start conversations on places like Twitter, how do you approach talking to someone? Instead of trying to hard-sell your physical therapy practice, the best approach should be a more natural conversation that simply proves your expertise in the field of physical therapy. At the same time, you can use these social media conversations as a way to create a patient persona so you understand what they’re looking for in doctors providing the best physical therapy techniques.

Where Should You Start Your Social Media Conversations?

Conversations can take place on any social media platform, though Twitter is one of the best places to search for discussions and join in. Through a simple hashtag search, you can find conversations underway related to physical therapy.

Because Twitter has discussions underway about virtually everything, you likely won’t have trouble finding numerous people discussing physical therapy issues. When you join in on a conversation, make it a natural progression without mentioning how you’re a physical therapist or own a clinic. Any hint that you’re trying to sell yourself could risk you being blocked.

This is why it’s important to write a compelling Twitter bio so those who click on your profile can see that you already have credibility. As you start a conversation, you can start to learn some things about the type of patients you want to connect with. Here’s some things to find out about prospective patients so you can further target your marketing toward them.

What You Can Determine from General Information

Once you become friends with the above people on Twitter, they’ll start following you. Don’t let the conversations end, though, because you’ll be surprised at how much you’ll get to know about them as you continue talking with one another.

You’ll want to know a few things outside of general points like their age and what they do for a living. Here are some areas to focus on:

1. Pain Points

Finding out the pain points of a prospective patient is essential because you determine exactly what kind of physical pain they’re experiencing and how you can help solve it. Once you get to know your followers, you can find out what kind of physical pain they’re having and how it affects them during their work day.

2. Is Pain Stopping Them from Reaching a Goal?

As an adjunct to pain points, is the physical pain in any person above preventing them from accomplishing something? Find out what that pain is, because your marketing content can hone in on this to prove your techniques. You can do this later by showing past examples of solving pain problems so patients could function physically again in their careers.

3. What They Expect from Physical Therapy

Try to find out what physical therapy techniques these prospective patients are looking for in particular. Can they wrap their busy schedules around yours? Finding out what they expect can help you tweak things further in your physical therapy clinic marketing content so you attract like-minded people to your social media accounts without seeking them first.

[info_box]If this is a new pursuit for you and your practice, it may sound a bit daunting at first. This response is normal, but that’s exactly where we can come in to help. Contact E-Rehab once you’re ready to take control of your physical therapy clinic marketing, so we can assist you by finding unique social media marketing tactics for your physical therapy practice.[/info_box]

How to Enhance Video Marketing for Physical Therapists

video marketing for physical therapists

How do you spread the word about your physical therapy practice? For many therapists, this is a difficult question to answer. Limited resources and time often means having to rely on word of mouth from current patients to attract new visitors. But as it turns out, there are plenty of cost-effective ways to help patients find your practice, and one of the most underutilized tools to accomplish this is video marketing for physical therapists. Below, we break down some of the best ways to tackle your video marketing campaign, so that you can get the word out about your practice and watch as more patients flock to your clinic.

Develop a Plan

Here’s an example of what you don’t want to do when it comes to video marketing for physical therapists: one day, you decide the medium is right for you, so you buy a camera at the local super market and shoot some footage around the office. Then you upload the video somewhere, and hope people find it. Well, aside from the potentially serious HIPAA violations, chances are strong that no patients or potential patients will see this video if it’s posted like this. This means you’ve just wasted money on a camera and time on putting the footage together.

Instead, the first thing you should do is come up with a plan. To do so, ask yourself the following questions:

What are you able to shoot in and around the office?
What should and should not be filmed?
Who would be willing and able to be a part of the video?
How can you promote your video once it’s finished?
Most importantly: what type of video would be most effective?

Coming Up with the Right Content

That last question is an interesting one. Your first thought is probably to go toward a promotional, commercial-like video that showcases your practice, staff and patients in 30 to 60 seconds. But in reality, there may be better alternatives to help your marketing.

Here are three examples that will likely perform better than a basic promotional video:

Feature an array of patient testimonials that highlight all the great attributes of your practice, which will automatically improve your reputation.
Create a “behind-the-scenes” video of your front desk staff and therapists, which will convey a personal atmosphere.
Make educational videos about common patient concerns and ailments that don’t directly promote your practice, but establish your physical therapists as thought leaders and experts on relevant content.

Promoting Your Videos

Of course, even the best video will not help your physical therapy practice if nobody ends up seeing it. That’s why you should promote the video, both on your website and your social media channels. We’ve covered the ideal social media networks for physical therapists in a past blog post; videos make for perfect content to enhance your presence. You may even consider playing your videos in the waiting area and patient rooms to increase engagement with your current and new patients.

To Get the Most of Video Marketing for Physical Therapists: Listen

Finally—and this may sound counterintuitive—one of the most important aspects of video marketing for physical therapists is not only giving out a message, but listening in response. By that, we mean hearing feedback about your videos from your patients, which will help you improve your video marketing efforts in the future.

It’s important to keep this in mind: successful video marketing for physical therapists is not a one-time deal in which you produce an amazing video and can rest on your laurels for the next decade. Instead, it requires regular updates and new videos that keep your patients invested and coming back. [pullquote4 textColor=”#dbe308″]Successful video marketing for physical therapists is not a one-time deal in which you produce an amazing video and can rest on your laurels for the next decade. Instead, it requires regular updates and new videos that keep your patients invested and coming back. [/pullquote4] By listening to their feedback, you can ensure that your videos continue to improve and help your practice gain patients.

Of course, this type of strategical video marketing for physical therapists—from developing a plan to coming up with the content and promoting the video all the way to adjusting your strategy based on feedback—requires significant time investment. And we completely understand that running a physical practice generally does not leave this kind of time available!

[titled_box title=”We’re Here to Help” bgColor=”#000000″ textColor=”#000000″]This is why we want to help. Contact us at E-Rehab to learn more about how we’ve helped other physical therapists like you spread awareness about their practice using video marketing, and start talking to us about how we can do the same for you.[/titled_box]

Reputation Management for Physical Therapy: Important Tips to Implement Today

reputation management for physical therapy

Maintaining a good reputation is important for any business, but it’s particularly important for anyone in the healthcare industry. To keep your private practice at the top, it’s critical to focus on reputation management for physical therapy right now.

Don’t Wait for a Problem before Taking Action

Physical therapists often focus on the importance of prevention, and this very same concept should apply to your reputation. This is why you shouldn’t wait until your physical therapy practice has a bad reputation before you do something about it. By being proactive now, you can help ensure that people find good things about your practice when they search your name.

Hiring a good reputation management firm, such as E-Rehab, can be a great approach to tackling this issue. However, there are also some steps that you can take on your own to help boost and maintain your practice’s reputation. Below are some useful tips that will help your practice earn a reputation that reflects its high quality.

Post Your Own Positive Content

To improve your online reputation, it’s helpful to first think about how your practice will appear to a prospective patient. With this in mind, try to address the following:

First of all, if you want people to find positive things when they enter your practice’s name into their favorite search engine, then you have to ensure that these positive things exist. This means that you should be creating online content that relates to your practice.
For example, if you haven’t already started a blog, you should definitely consider doing so. A blog can help with your search engine optimization, show the world your expertise, and it can be the first thing people find when searching for content related to your practice.
You should also build social media profiles on all of the big social media sites, including some that you might not have thought about using in your industry, such as Pinterest.
Lastly, it’s helpful to build profiles of yourself and your practice on physical therapy-related websites, upload informative videos to YouTube and build a profile on all of the local review sites.

Don’t Ignore Negative Content

It’s easy to ignore negative reviews and posts from others, but doing so can actually be quite harmful for your practice. [pullquote4 bgColor=”#000000″ textColor=”#46c0e9″]Regardless of whether someone’s post is true or not, those who see may often change their opinion regarding your practice. This can obviously pose a problem and cause potential patients to go to your competitors for treatment instead of you.[/pullquote4]Regardless of whether someone’s post is true or not, those who see may often change their opinion regarding your practice. This can obviously pose a problem and cause potential patients to go to your competitors for treatment instead of you.

If you make an effort to communicate with the person who has complained, however, in most cases you can improve the situation. If you address the negative comment, the person who posted the negative review might be willing to delete it or amend it. Even if they don’t take either of these actions, those who see this communication will at least know that you and your practice made an effort to respond to a problem or concern that a patient had.

Gather Testimonials and Reviews

Over time, have probably had quite a high number of patients that were satisfied with the treatment they received at your practice. So, why not use their satisfaction to your advantage?

The best way to do this is to gather testimonials from satisfied patients and post them on your website
You should also encourage your patients to post their feedback on the major local review sites and directly on your website
If people who are seeking physical therapy see that your previous patients are happy with the care that you have provided, then they might be more likely to give you a call for their physical therapy needs

Don’t Overlook Your Reputation Management for Physical Therapy

As you can probably see, reputation management for physical therapy isn’t necessarily easy, and it may require a lot of work. But if you look at the big picture, you’ll see that building and maintaining a strong online reputation is critical if you want your physical therapy practice to be successful.

[info_box]Along with tackling some of these steps yourself, it’s a good idea to work with a reputation management firm that understands your practice and wants to make it a success. To find out more about reputation management for physical therapy, as well as search engine optimization and marketing, contact us at E-Rehab today.[/info_box]

Physical Therapy Reputation Management Made Simple

physical therapy reputation management

For many private practices, physical therapy reputation management may seem like a vague process. Physical therapists specialize in knowing their patients, dealing with injuries and building back strength, but when it comes to creating a proactive plan for a healthy reputation, you may not know where to start. If this sounds familiar to you, the following short primer will show you how a reputation management firm like E-Rehab can help your physical therapy practice establish authority in a digital age.

Physical Therapy Reputation Management: What it is and is not

In the most basic sense, [highlight3 textColor=”#000000″]physical therapy reputation management is creating content that matches your goals and standards so that patients know what they are getting from you.[/highlight3] If your practice specializes in spinal rehab, but your marketing information makes it sound like you’re the best place to go for arm injuries, this can create a disconnect with visitors. In this case, patients expect one thing and get another. This can lead to your patients writing negative reviews about your practice on various review sites (Yelp, Angie’s List, etc.), which will in turn hurt your reputation, even though you’re an expert at spinal care.

Reputation management seeks to establish in people’s minds what you do and don’t do well, so they know what to expect. It does not seek to create false reviews, attempt to get poor reviews taken down (this doesn’t include patently false, libelous reviews), or otherwise take pushy actions to establish your reputation.

Walk the Talk

[highlight3 textColor=”#000000″]The most important part of physical therapy reputation management is that you have information out for people to access: newsletters to subscribers, blogs to the public, and targeted marketing to the right patients and referring physicians. [/highlight3] This information must match what people actually experience from your practice.

With proper information designed and marketed to the right audience, your business reputation will increase consistent with your desired goals and specialties. Walking the talk is the foundation for all other aspects of reputation management. With it, patients will give you great reviews and build your reputation with minimal effort on your part. Without it, your patients will feel confused and let down because they did not receive the service they expected.

Marketing Materials

In physical therapy reputation management, the next essential step after establishing a clear connection between your actions and your message is creating the right marketing materials. [highlight3]From your brand to your planned content, your marketing material needs to reflect your business in both quality and content.[/highlight3]

Much of physical therapy happens at a level people cannot see, so at first they will judge you less by the results of your actions and more by the materials they see. Your marketing material therefore needs to be designed in such a way that it catches the eye of potential patients and referring physicians and displays that you do what you advertise.

Promotional Design

Much of the marketing in physical therapy is specialized and therefore needs to be done by specialists. For example, if you offer therapy that helps address the symptoms of insomnia and narcolepsy, you do not want your advertising materials for it to be bright yellow, orange or green. When marketers want to communicate sleep-oriented products, they create a dark blue color scheme to communicate peaceful sleep. This is one of the many tricks-of-the trade which marketers use to communicate to the public beyond just word. Style matters, and it pays to have experts in style design your marketing materials.

[highlight2 textColor=”#000000″]Simply put, reputation management is producing the right materials to let patients know what your practice offers and the core values you hold as a physical therapist. This is accomplished by using modern marketing and networking materials and techniques with a goal to educate your audience and establish your authority in the physical therapy field.[/highlight2] [squeeze_box4]If this all sounds overwhelming and you feel that you need some extra assistance with your physical therapy reputation management, have no fear: we can help. At E-Rehab, we specialize in all aspects of online marketing strategies that can help your reputation improve and your practice prosper. Contact us today to find out how we can help you develop an online reputation that reflects the quality of your business.[/squeeze_box4]

Why You Need a Blog to Improve Your Physical Therapy Reputation Marketing

Are you struggling to create a successful physical therapy reputation marketing approach? If so, you should strongly consider writing blogs if you’re not already doing so. Although blogs are often treated like an afterthought by many businesses, they can be a powerful tool for boosting the reputation of your physical therapy practice.

Why You Should Blog to Improve Your Physical Therapy Reputation Marketing

Business owners often neglect the importance of a blog when it comes to reputation marketing, but that is a huge mistake: [highlight4]blogs are actually one of the most effective ways to spread your brand and reach a potential audience.[/highlight4]

This is even true of a physical therapist like you: a well-written, fun, and informative blog can provide your patients with information about common physical problems, easy self-fixes, unique personal stories, and treatment angles they would have never considered otherwise.

Build Your Authority

By way of illustration, marketing expert Steve Olenski of Forbes magazine delved deeply into the world of blog-based marketing and found that it offered a unique approach to the following: content strategy; demographic marketing, and authority building.

The latter point is especially important: if you come across like a true expert on physical therapy (by offering well-researched and engaging blog content), your reputation will grow by leaps and bounds.[blockquote align=”center”]Blogging also offers a unique way for your patients to interact with you via the comment section found in most high-quality blogs. Here, they can praise your blog content and your services, which will create a positive feedback loop that will continually enhance your reputation for years to come.[/blockquote]

Even if they come to your blog to complain, you can still turn that into an advantage by directly addressing their concerns and soothe their fears by offering a free examination. You will come away looking humble and willing to fix your mistakes: a major reputation boost.

Researching Blog Topics

Consistently updating a worthwhile blog requires finding topics you want to write about. That’s actually much trickier than it seems, especially as a physical therapy expert, since you already have an extremely extensive understanding of the subject matter. On the other hand, the audience of your website doesn’t have this same understanding, and figuring out what they’d like to learn about can be a struggle.

In this circumstance, it’s best to step back and think about an industry or service which you know little about, such as auto repair, and consider what confuses you about it. Then, you should brainstorm similar topics for your blog, such as:

Common injuries or painful conditions
Relevant treatments used to address these issues
Other techniques and services you may use during treatment
How long each treatment session takes, and how many sessions may be needed for certain injuries

Next, try to center each of your blogs around these ideas, such as ACL tear rehabilitation, to create a plethora of possible blog topics. If you get stuck trying to find a good topic, use a tool like Google AdWords to pinpoint commonly searched keywords that are relevant to physical therapy.

For example, keywords and phrases like “torn ACL” and “did I break my ankle?” commonly show up in Google searches. Pitch your blog around these keywords, adding a unique twist, such as “home remedies for a broken toe,” and you have a potential blog topic.

Always Utilize a Reputable “Author” for All Content

Creating a blog without a reputable author is one of the biggest ways you can destroy the effectiveness of your physical therapy reputation marketing. Don’t farm it out to just anyone: either write the blog yourself, find a skilled intern willing to do it for some extra cash, or find reputable physical therapists willing to occasionally guest blog for you.

Focusing your blog on truly informative and knowledgeable writers creates a sense of “author authority” that will make your blog stand out in an over-saturated market. People will immediately trust what you have to say and, as a result, your blog—and your reputation—will grow exponentially.

[squeeze_box5]By now, it should be apparent that you simply can’t avoid setting up a blog for your physical therapy practice. The boost to your reputation will be too immense for you to ignore. However, if you’re still struggling to set up a good blog or come up with a great reputation marketing strategy, please don’t hesitate to contact us at E-Rehab right away. Our physical therapy reputation marketing experts will help fine-tune your marketing approach, help you design an eye-catching and memorable blog, and get you on the road to success. After that, the hard work of keeping up with your blog should be a heck of a lot easier.[/squeeze_box5]

Physical Therapy Mobile Marketing: Capturing First-Time Patients with a Compelling App

physical therapy mobile marketing

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]

The Importance of Reputation Marketing for Physical Therapists

Running a successful physical therapy practice is about more than just knowing how to help patients rehabilitate from their injuries. As the owner of a private practice, you’re not only marketing your expertise as a physical therapist. You are also marketing yourself.

This is why reputation marketing for physical therapists is such an important component of running a successful business. The reputation you create in your community will be the biggest reason why your practice thrives or fails. You need to make sure that your patients are happy, and that they’re telling people about their positive experience at your practice.

If you’re not sure how to go about marketing your reputation, here are a few tips you can use to keep the word-of-mouth regarding your practice positive:

Be Proactive

You might think that your reputation is something that just “happens,” without requiring any effort on your part. And in a sense, this is partly true: you will develop a reputation eventually, one way or another.

But if you don’t stay committed to shaping and guiding that reputation, then you may lose control over it. This can mean that your side of the story won’t be heard, and your satisfied patients might never get a chance to tell their stories and attract other patients.

This is why it’s so important to take a proactive role in shaping your reputation. Here’s how:

Before doing anything else, it’s essential that you ensure all patients coming to your practice are in fact satisfied with the treatment they’re receiving. If they’re not, then this should be your first priority, and you should make any necessary changes to address this problem right away.
Once you are certain that all your patients are pleased with their treatment, give them an incentive to tell other people about it. Offer a discount or bonus for referring a new patient, or ask them to leave you a review online. Most patients will be glad to help if they are happy with their outcomes.
Also be sure to stay up-to-date on what’s being said about your practice, both good and bad. If a patient is not satisfied, don’t take it personally. Instead, use it as an opportunity to show others how you respond to criticism, and professionally address any issues that patient may have with a comment. This is the true heart of reputation marketing for physical therapists: knowing how and when to engage in order to polish your reputation.

Give Them a Reason to Brag

Your patients come to you to overcome injuries and pain. You might think that if you help them do that, you’ve done your job and that’s it.

However, that’s exactly what’s expected of you. It won’t necessarily knock anyone’s socks off, and it won’t necessarily build your brand.

It doesn’t take much to set yourself apart. All it takes is something unexpected that shows you have each of your patient’s best interests at heart. For example, a study was performed that showed that waiters could improve tips by 23%, simply by providing extra peppermints after the meal.

A few extra peppermints is nothing – but it’s truly the thought and effort that counts. Try to brainstorm on how you can make the rehabilitation process a 5-star experience for patients. It could be something as simple as warm towels, a glass of lemonade, or just taking a few extra minutes to get to know your patients.

[pullquote1 align=”center” textColor=”#000000″]Give your patients more than the minimum that they would expect, and they won’t be able to stop telling their friends about you. [/pullquote1]

Make Sure Your Online Presence Captures Your In-Person Experience

After you’ve taken the time to make sure everything is perfect in your office, make sure this all translates to your online presence. Here are a few ways to make this happen:

Go through your website and see if there’s anything clunky or frustrating. If you’ve found any negative reviews, this is a great time to learn from them.
Make everything as painless as possible, from setting an appointment online to getting in contact with you, so that visitors don’t have to hunt around.
You can also use your website to provide service outside of regular hours. Consider hosting a few videos showing simple exercises for pain relief, or blog about sports injuries and other topics that will interest your patients.

Many physical therapists view their online presence as a hassle that they have to deal with. That’s why so many have ugly, plain websites that do nothing for them.

If instead you view it as an opportunity to set yourself apart, your reputation will improve and spread in no time.
[titled_box title=”Start Focusing on Reputation Marketing for Physical Therapists Today” variation=”red” bgColor=”#000000″ textColor=”#000000″]If you’d like to learn more about powerful reputation marketing for physical therapists, contact us today. We can help you harness the power of the Internet to make you the go-to authority in your area – guaranteed.[/titled_box]

Put the Best PT Marketing Ideas to Work for Your Practice

Is your PT practice struggling to get new clients, losing clients, or just lacking the consistency needed to keep your therapists busy? If this sounds familiar, it might be because you aren’t taking full advantage of all the effective PT marketing strategies that are available to you. To help you make better use of these essential tools, here are the best PT marketing ideas that you can start utilizing at your practice today:

Overcome the POPTS dilemma:

Many orthopedic doctors refer to their own physical therapy (POPTS), which can leave your PT practice hanging, especially if the majority of your patients come from orthopedic physician referrals. If this is your practice’s problem, then it’s time to overhaul your marketing strategy, which will help you rely less on orthopedic physician referrals and more on referrals from GPs, internists, returning patients, and patient referrals. When it comes to marketing, it’s best to re-order your priorities to the following groups:

Referrals from GPs & internists,
Returning patients,
Referrals from returning patients,
Walk-ins.

How do I do that?

Start with a budget for marketing. Many practices don’t worry about marketing because they’ve been reliant on orthopedic physician referrals to drive their business. With your new priority list in mind, develop a realistic budget to determine how much you can spend on marketing.

How much should you budget for physical therapy marketing? My standard answer is as much as it takes to grow the practice and meet your goals, and not a penny more. That said, it’s not uncommon to budget 20-30% of your profits or 4-10% of your gross revenue for marketing.

Once you’ve established a budget, focus on formulating a game plan for how you will market your PT practice.

Online marketing is the fastest growing promotional channel, and this is for a good reason: It’s quick and cheap, and also gives you access to a wide audience.

Types of Online PT Marketing to Consider

So now that you have a budget and are committed to online marketing, it’s time to get started. Here are the basics for any PT online marketing campaign:

Search Engines: the search engines are where a vast majority of your patients or prospects start the process of getting to know you. It’s important to put some time, effort, and money into ranking your practice on page one for:
1. a search for your business name,
2. a search for physical therapy in your city (e.g. physical therapy Los Angeles),
3. a search for niche services you provide (e.g. vestibular therapy, women’s health, TMJ treatment, etc.).

Website: Your practice needs a good website that gives visitors the information they need to decide that you are in fact the right practice for them. While you can make a website on your own, it’s a better idea to have it created by professionals instead. A company that builds websites will know the right way to create a design so that it attracts attention without annoying your visitors. You want your website to look polished and professional, and unless you have experience designing business websites yourself, you will will need a professional to get the look you’re going for.

Your website should include basic contact and location information, your hours, and your practice’s specialties. Include bios and pictures of each physical therapist that details their experience, certification, and specialties. This will help you with Internet searches, since many people use it as their main tool to find a therapist who can help them with a specific injury.

Newsletter: An email newsletter is a great way to reach new and returning patients who can subscribe using their email address. These newsletters should detail news about your practice (new equipment, a new therapist, special holiday hours, etc.), along with some information about physical therapy in general. The options are really quite wide open here. Stay conscientious of the fact that your newsletter readers are interested in staying healthy, recovering quickly, and preventing future injuries. Use your newsletter as an opportunity to demonstrate that you are the experts in your field by highlighting educational and informative articles and adding in your own expert voice.

Social media: Your practice should also have a social media campaign as a way to reach existing patients who will refer your practice to their friends. Encourage your existing patients to follow your social media accounts to keep up to date with your practice. Your social media campaign should be informative and interactive. Follow and post content that relates to health and physical therapy in general, rather than topics that are only specific to your practice. Also be sure to respond to any comments you receive, both positive and negative. Having a strong social media presence will make your practice stand out within your community and will also lead to more walk-in patients.

Ratings & Reviews: online reputation is the second most trusted form of advertising. Establishing yourself as a leader in the community, via patient ratings and reviews, will definitely drive business. Having a systematic process in place to capture the 5-star satisfaction your patients’ convey to you in the practice and then getting that message out on Google, Facebook, Yelp, and Healthgrades.com, is another great way to drive new business in the door.

[squeeze_box]If an online marketing campaign seems daunting to you, don’t worry. You don’t have to be in this alone. For more information on PT marketing ideas for your practice or to find out how we can develop a campaign for you, contact E-Rehab today![/squeeze_box]

Physical Therapy Website Design: Creating a Library of Educational Information for Patients

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.

Improving Your Physical Therapy Newsletters Open Rate

As a small practice, physical therapy newsletters are a great way to share news, explain your expertise, and provide offers to your patients, but what happens if your analytics are telling you that no one reads them? Here are our top strategies to increase the open rates for your physical therapy newsletters.

1. Personalize, Personalize, Personalize.

There are many things that you can personalize in order to encourage click-through rates.

First, personalize the “From” field by including your real name. People are more inclined to click an email coming from a real person (you), not just the name of your practice. In addition, having your name in the “From” field dissuades spam filters from blocking your email. This also helps build your office as a people-friendly one, when people can recognize you as the sender.

Second, personalize emails by addressing your subscribers or patients personally. If you have the data to apply your subscriber’s name to the subject line or preview to the body of an email, use it. According to research by Hubspot with Market Domination Media, open rates increased by 1.2 percent when the first name of a subscriber was included in the subject line. By addressing a recipient personally, you‘ll draw their attention more so than not using their name.

If you don’t have the data to address your recipients with their names–maybe due to online sign-up forms versus patients who have already visited you—you can still market to them personally by using “you.” In the same study, addressing the receiver as “you” and telling them what they will receive increased open rates. Thank yous are also effective in increasing the click-through rate.

Overall, personalization is a helpful strategy in improving your email open rates. If you aren’t doing it, it’s time to start incorporating it into your emails. Just remember to do it sparingly; overuse can decrease curiosity, so rotate this strategy with other tools.

2. Pay attention to the subject line.

Getting someone to open an email is largely dependent on how the subject line grabs the reader’s attention.

The same tricks to writing a headline for an article applies to an email’s subject line. Keep your subject lines short (around 6 words), use eye-catching adjectives and phrases (such as “strange,” “essential,” “against all odds” etc.), and avoid spammykeywords (such as “cash” or “save”). By spending time on crafting an interesting headline, you‘ll have a better time convincing readers to click on your email, before they decide to avoid or trash it. You can find the research that backs up these tips over at Entrepreneur.

3. Make sure your emails are mobile responsive.

As statistics have shown, checking and opening email on mobile devices have grown. About 74 percent of mobile users check their email, and while open rates vary from one industry to the next, everyone can benefit from responsive email design. Simply making sure your campaigns are visible on a smartphone or tablet can increase your open rates drastically, especially if your email newsletters don’t currently support responsive design.

4. Use segmentation.

Segmenting your email list is a great way to improve your email open rates, since it allows you to get the right content to the right people. Basically, after studying your lists and finding out what people want, you can send emails with differing content, based on the receiver’s personal interests or challenges. In a study by Marketing Sherpa, using segmentation strategies increased their open rates from 20% to 40%, and clickthrough rates from 2% to 6%. For your office, a segmented list can look like one group who wants special information and tips for physical therapy after work-related problems or injuries, and another segmented list could be for sports or active bodies that could see you for sports-related pains.

5. Share Something of Value

Offering diverse content that is worth reading is the holly grail of email marketing. When your emails don’t apply to your patients are are simply about musculoskeletal conditions that your patients don’t have, you‘re likely to see a drop in open rates. You can spice them up by adding videos, photos,infographics, and links to valuable, useful content on your blog or website. In addition, changing your email’s layout might do some good as well.

E-rehab’s Newsletter Strategy

[info_box]Since 2003, E-rehab.com has provided its PT customers with patient and physician newsletters. Originally, we would send out information about conditions that PTs treat. After a small patient focus group, we switched our message. We now send out information about wellness topics that are more interesting, patients report they are more valuable, and we’ve repeatedly heard positive feedback from our customers. You can check out some newsletter examples here. If you need help developing your physical therapy newsletters, contact us. We’d love to help you with your newsletter marketing.[/info_box]

Physical Therapy Online Marketing: Finding Your Key Audience in Patients and Referrals

Physical therapy online marketing is a necessary move if you want to hone in on capturing prospective patients who spend time online. Even if you’ve already done extensive online marketing for your physical therapy practice, you’ve likely realized that you need to focus more on capturing the right demographics. It isn’t enough to just market yourself to the entire online world and hope someone will notice and visit your website.

Ultimately, being thorough in finding key groups of people you need to capture, is the real secret to successful online marketing today. Those individuals are much easier to find through social media, though it doesn’t have to focus just there to attract the right people. It also means attracting prospective clients through website media or email.

So what type of contacts should you be seeking for your physical therapy clinic? Patients frequently fall into two different categories. Beyond there, you have other patients who are more local, plus those in the medical community who can help you improve your reputation.

Marketing To Past Patients

In your database, you likely have numerous patients who haven’t visited your physical therapy clinic for months or maybe years. In some cases, patients leave town due to personal circumstance or because they found another physical therapy source better suited for them.

Don’t delete these people from your database since you could still win them back with proper social media marketing or through email newsletters. If you had a social media account when they started with you, no doubt they still follow you on places like Twitter or Facebook. It’s rare when people take the time to unfollow someone they already followed years ago, especially if they have thousands of other people on their lists.

Link up with these former patients again with a direct message offering a special deal at your clinic. Or, perhaps advertise discounts directly on your social media feed. Direct messaging needs doing with discretion, since it can easily look like spam if you’re not careful. By checking to see if the person still follows you, advertising directly on your account means they’ll see it there anyway.

If they signed up for an email newsletter, send them specialized emails detailing what makes you stand out from your competitors of late. Your improvement examples will follow exactly what led those past patients to change to your competitor months or years before.

Marketing to Current Patients

To round out the potential for a healthy return on investment toward your marketing, re-focus efforts on marketing toward your current patients. Retaining patients you already have is imperative for this year and every year since they could also easily slip away if you’re not careful.

You can do this by also offering discounts for valued patients, plus providing health education on topics they can’t find anywhere else. The latter might be the most important of all, when value is what many people want while seeking medical treatments.

By making exclusive educational information available on social media or through newsletters, you help people improve their health on their own complementing the physical therapy you provide.

Marketing to Local Patients and Other Doctors

Local marketing is more important than ever, you can capture those already having physical therapy done with your competitors. When you place your information on local online directories, like Yelp or Yahoo! Local, you increase your chances of being found. Don’t forget, though, that you need your name, address, and phone number consistently on every entry so everyone can easily contact you immediately. Far too many businesses forget to place simple contact information in their local directory listings.

As for marketing toward doctors, you want them available for referrals and recommendations.

Contact us here at E-rehab.com so we can help you with your physical therapy online marketing procedures this year. It’s time you captured and re-captured the people who make or made your clinic successful on a consistent basis.

Why Video Marketing for Physical Therapists Is A Good Idea

Video marketing is one of the most popular marketing tools because it is a great way to promote your business. But it’s not just for retail businesses. Video marketing for physical therapists is also an affordable marketing channel to reach your local community. Consider these stats when it comes to video, consumers, health care information, and the Internet:

87% of adults use the Internet. Pew Internet
72% of internet users say they looked online for health information within the past year. Pew Internet
52 percent of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions. Invodo
75% of smartphone owners watch videos on their phones; 26% at least once per day. B2Community

Want a couple more reasons why you should use video marketing? How about these: not only are videos inexpensive to make, but once you post them on the Internet, they are there forever. Just think, a video you post today could still send traffic to your Website and growth to your business years from now. Also, we all know that social media is obviously here to stay; so make it work for you. Video has quickly become a must-have on social media networks. How many viral videos have you seen this week?

Here are three tips to make it easier for you to add videos to your marketing plan.

Define your goals and metrics.

You have to make sure everyone expects the same things from the video you are producing. For example, let’s say that the practice owner wants a straight-forward advertisement that the value of seeing a physical therapist first, but the video developer doesn’t have any idea what physical therapy is like (e.g. PT is like massage, or chiropractic, or personal training). Now you have a problem. Make sure everyone has the same expectations by asking questions like:

Should you make several short videos on a specific topic?
Will the tone of the videos be funny and entertaining or more formal?
Is the goal to promote your company and services or to include other things like industry news or interviews with recognized experts?

Your team has to define the metrics that will tell you whether or not the video is a success. These metrics are things such as the number of views, number of shares, number of likes, whether it goes viral, how much traffic increases on your company Website, or any increase in sales.

Include a call to action.

It is easy to have a call to action (CTA) in print. In most cases, with a service business like physical therapy, the CTA is your phone number. With a video, you need a clearly defined CTA that people can see (such as putting a phone number or URL on the bottom of the screen) and hear (such as saying, “Call 888-555-1234 now to schedule.”). Add an end-screen or outro to your video that shows your company name, logo, phone number, Website, and any other necessary information.

Here’s an Example of a Video with a Call to Action

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFhA_X8Kr0s

Share your video across social media.

According to Entrepreneur, “In 2014, YouTube officially became the second-largest search engine, with over 300 hours of content uploaded every minute, and those billion unique visitors watch more than six billion hours of video every month.” Now that’s the power of social media in action!

There are so many ways to use social media to your advantage. Post your video to YouTube and to your company Website. Then tweet and retweet the URLs again and again on Twitter. Upload the video to your company LinkedIn page, and invite people to comment on it. Ask your employees to promote the video to their social media network. That one video has made its way across four platforms in no time at all.

If you are going to be on the Web and use social media, then you also have to think about how people might search for your video (Video Search Engine Optimization or VSEO). Make a list of the keywords to use to get your video at the top of every major search engine’s results page. Plan the content of your video around these keywords. You might be surprised to see your video rank like this one.