Successful physical therapy marketing means that you’re set up to drive more referrals, more recurring business and more income streams through a variety of marketing channels and actions.
And since it’s hard enough to keep your focus on delivering the best patient care possible every time, we wanted to soften your marketing burden by giving some insights into how to best direct your time and attention in 2022.
Please Note: In order to kickstart your marketing strategy and ensure the best practices and insights are in place to play the long game for growing your business via digital marketing, you need to perform the upfront workshops and analysis to better inform your direction. This includes creating the right buyer personas for the type of patients you’re targeting, researching the competition to find the best ways to differentiate your practice and implementing the right search engine marketing practices to get found online easier. Need help? Just ask MEG.
Nevertheless, there are still immediate actions you can take to nurture and grow your business by getting more and more patients in the door. Let’s look at three specific areas to target your physical therapy marketing efforts and how you can best serve them with a marketing strategy:
Your local community
This is the group of strangers, the John Q Public who live in your neighborhood and the surrounding communities your clinic serves. Your marketing should be set up in such a way that they can find you online or become aware of you through local events and social media engagements.
Yes, your physical therapy website can be the digital business card necessary to give people more information about your practice, but how do they find you? This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play. You need to be utilizing the right keywords across your website to be found online via search queries from prospective patients. This is part of an overall content marketing strategy that can include blogs, email and social media.
In the same way, you need to be listed in the appropriate online directories that will showcase your business for local search. Your Google Business Profile is the most critical listing you should create. This is where you can add essential info, showcase images and reviews and provide directions – it’s most likely to be the first impression people get of your clinic.
You can also create a pathway to your website via social media. Many local businesses use Facebook and Instagram ads to drive traffic and then provide a dedicated offer on their website.
With each of these channels, the goal is to create more direct access patients by converting website traffic into scheduled appointments.
Your current or past patients:
The best (and least expensive) business comes from repeat customers. By delivering excellent patient care, you create your own marketing team from these patients who will go on to refer their family and friends. So, how do you keep this group engaged?
We recommend a weekly or monthly newsletter that shares a lot of the content marketing that we discussed in the last section. This newsletter will highlight clinic news, patient testimonials, product/service features and tag your latest blog, podcast, etc.
The more useful, informative content you can create, the more your patients will see you as an expert resource for health and wellness. Besides being the first place they will look for information when they need it, it also keeps your clinic top of mind so when they see an opportunity to recommend your services, they seize it.
Additionally, you can use marketing CRM and automation software to note special dates (birthdays, wedding, treatment anniversaries, etc.) and send them a message of goodwill. This is another great way to reconnect with patients.
Finally, you can use Google Ads or Social Media Ads to retarget patients or website visitors who have previously been on your site and then serve up a deal or offer to get them to rebook or try a new, related service.
Across each of these practical marketing strategies, your goal should be to re-engage and create brand advocates out of your existing patient database.
Your local physicians:
Finally, the tried and true physical therapy marketing tactic of building relationships with the physicians in your community remains important.
These days, there are more barriers than ever making it difficult to cultivate these relationships, so we recommend an altered approach in 2022.
While it’s still useful to give referral slips and program information to the doctors in your community, it’s important to establish your role as a “helper” to this demographic as well. We’ve found that providing printed resources is the quickest way to a physician’s heart. This even works for doctors who aren’t allowed to refer you. So, how does that work?
Essentially, if you can identify where doctors could use the most help in recommending services to their patients, you can create handouts for them to provide. This will typically entail different stretching exercises for different ailments. The best part – make sure your information and a QR code to a page on your website to learn more is included at the bottom of the handout.
The goal is once again to receive more patients just by being a helpful, expert resource in your community.
To learn more about how to elevate your physical therapy marketing strategy, contact MEG today.
