How targeted is your private practice marketing plan? Do you cast a wide net and hope you’ll attract business, or do you understand your target markets and have a more specific marketing strategy?
As a physical therapy practice owner, understanding your target market will make your marketing efforts more successful. By targeting your marketing spend to the right audience with the right message at the right time, you’re more likely to attract patients who will benefit from your services the most.
Use these five steps to find the right target audience for your private practice marketing:
Evaluate Your Services
Does your physical therapy practice aim to help patients with sports injuries, or do you focus on pediatric or geriatric care? What are your specialties? Ask yourself:
- What types of patients will benefit from my services?
- What conditions do we help them with?
- How do we solve their pain points?
Now consider whether you’re targeting this group of patients in your physical therapy marketing or across your physical therapy website. From keywords to dedicated web pages to unique offers, deliver content that scratches their specific itch.
Analyze Your Competitors
Looking at what other PTs in your area are doing is a strategic way to identify your own physical therapy target market. You can model good content, but you can also discover what gaps exist for services in your area and fill the niche – similarly, you can see what services the market is saturated with and seek to differentiate.
We recommend observing how your competitors position themselves and their messaging. Looking at their website is the easiest way for you to conduct this research and serves as an excellent way to evaluate your own website to ensure you’re not missing critical messaging.
Understand Buyer Personas
Think of what segments your patients fall into. Some demographic criteria includes:
- Age
- Location
- Income
- Occupation
- Gender
Once you segment your patient types, you can use that information to build a Buyer Persona, which is a fictional portrayal of your patient types. Personas are created by grouping patients with similar characteristics and are used in marketing to target your messaging without compromising actual patient details.
You can dig even deeper by addressing common activities performed by that patient segment, what challenges they typically face, etc. – this opens up more areas for you to address a solution.
Research Further
Once you understand your target market of patients, you can do additional research on how to reach them effectively. Your patient buyer personas can give you insights on what channels to use in your marketing, like direct mail, local advertising or text message.
You can also learn what messaging will resonate with your patients and where they do their research and make a note to include marketing efforts on those channels.
Evaluate and Refine Your Results
As your physical therapy practice grows and evolves, your target market will too – as will the internal and external marketing efforts for your private practice.
Regularly revisiting and updating your research will help you ensure you continue to use the right messaging on your physical therapy website and marketing materials. Try to review your target market at least once a year to keep it up to date.
Reach Your Target Market With MEG
If you need help finding the target audience for your business and building a website that can best serve them, check out MEG’s website design and redesign services. MEG can help you craft the right messaging and services to help patients find your physical therapy practice.
