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As soon as Halloween is over, most businesses move right into Christmas marketing. However, November is a great time small businesses and physical therapy practices to show a little gratitude towards their patients. We preach a lot about giving back in MEG – to your staff and to your patients – and now is a great month to give back to all of those a part of your public.
Get your patient care rep on board to plan some ways to show gratitude to your patients and your community. Here are seven ideas that are easy to do in your private practice this month and next as we round out the end of the year:
1. Support your community
Give thanks to your community by getting your team together to volunteer. Whether it’s making sandwiches for a local shelter, or even supporting a community turkey trot, these are easy ways to do some team building. These are also great opportunities to sponsor an organization in your community that might be a great partner for your practice.
2. Do a festive giveaway
Trying to get patients to keep their appointments? Doing fun giveaways is always a hit, so how about giving away a thanksgiving dinner or a gift card to the local grocery store? Take off a bit of stress for your patients while ensuring they keep their appointments during an otherwise stressful and hectic time of year.
3. Hold a canned-food drive in your clinic
Running a food drive and promoting how much your patients gave back is a great way to get them engaged, make them proud of YOUR practice for giving back to others. Promote this on social media and tag the organization you partner with for a little easy earned social media visibility.
4. Thank your patients
In addition to ensuring your patient care rep is surveying them, encourage your therapists or your marketing team to send out thank you notes to the patients who submit success stories or testimonials when discharged. Sending them a hand written thank you note from the team for their support and for being an amazing patient is a nice way to show how thankful you are for them trusting your team with their care.
5. Show customers your personal side
If you’re asking your patients to share what they’re thankful for, have your staff share as well and feature them across your social networks throughout the month. Whether you share their gratitude in a single blog post or on social media – it’ll help patients connect with your staff and add a nice touch of personality to your social media channels.
6. Feature your customers
Most private practice owners would be nervous about HIPAA, however, thanks to social media platforms like Banyan, you can feature them on platforms like Facebook or Instagram. You can feature those success story quotes or testimonials on social media channels without using names, or you can create a fun sign and have them hold it up before they’re discharged and feature them throughout the entire month of November or even December. Create engagement by having them post to social media and then sharing their images.
7. Look for local events
Fall is a lovely time to get involved in local events like races, festivals and other such community focused events. This is a great opportunity for you to share services (have a massage therapist on staff? Maybe they can donate some time to a post-race festival), and get your name out there while supporting those in the community.
Thanksgiving isn’t just for the birds
Most people think about November as a lead up to retail madness (aka Black Friday, Cyber Monday). But even non-retail organizations can get a piece of the marketing opportunities in the month of November. Showing gratitude for your patients is an easy way to do some easy promotion of your clinic, while also giving back to those who have supported your business over the past year.
Now that you have some ideas for incorporating a little patient love and gratitude into your clinic – we want to know how you’re practicing gratitude in your business this month? Tell us what’s worked and what hasn’t – we want to know!
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Brian Gallagher, PT is the founder and CEO of MEG Business Management, LLC. He has more than 27 years of experience in the field of rehabilitation and 19 years in business and specializes in Physical Therapy practice management and executive coaching nationwide. As a licensed business management consultant, Brian has helped hundreds of business owners nationwide improve their business operations through proper restructuring to achieve improved systems of efficiency and productivity as well as marketing and sales with effective public relations which have proven results for double-digit growth year-over-year with businesses around the country.
