As a physiotherapist, you have gained knowledge in providing quality care to people who are having some or other problems related to muscles, joints, etc. However, your medical skills must be complemented by marketing skills if you want to serve more patients. Your medical knowledge can reduce the pain of patients but you need to work on solid marketing strategies to eliminate the pain of not being able to grow your physiotherapy practice. So go through the physical therapy marketing ideas given below to start growing your practice faster.
1) Fine Tune Website, Get More Patients
It is a human tendency to look outwards first before paying attention to the things under their control. This is true in the case of marketing most businesses and services. A very basic thing like a website can be fine-tuned to convert visitors better. For this, the changes required from your side are:
A) Make good use of your site visitors by giving them the option to book appointments for physical therapy online. This small step itself will cause a rise in the number of appointments you are getting presently.
B) On your website, list all such features/elements that would contribute to showing the genuinity and worth of your physiotherapy practice. It will include things like certifications, awards, testimonials, achievements, accreditations, etc.
C) People seeking information online have a very short attention span. This means that delay in getting your site loaded would cause traffic and potential customer loss. To combat this, check your site loading speed and resolve all such factors that contribute to the slow loading time.
D) Video is much more impactful in conversions than plain text content. So get a video created about your physiotherapy practice and get it placed on your website homepage.
E) Make the website resolution flexible so that it adjusts according to the screen size of the device of visitors. In absence of a flexible resolution, the visitor experience may get hampered which will lead to the loss of some traffic/visitors.
F) Your website look must be elegant designwise and must be swift to navigate.
2) Start Improving Site SEO to Get More Patients
SEO (search engine optimization) of your physical therapy website, if handled correctly, can yield magnificent results for your business. Any website that ranks organically in Google gets the privilege of capturing potential customers who are actively looking for the respective product/service. This is why the conversion rates achieved from organic traffic are good. However, for a website to rank in Google, it takes a few months of effectively handling SEO parameters to see the results. Apart from this, it also requires efforts to maintain the rank consistently because new sites with better SEO strategies can replace it anytime. For this reason, it is better suited to outsource the SEO part of your website to any professional internet marketing agency.
3) Get Triple Benefits of Press Release
Press release marketing is one of the underused techniques for marketing a business because most people think of press releases as mere news announcement mediums. However, SEO agencies that know how to use it in other ways mostly use it for ranking the content for several long keywords (5,6 words and above) and the combined effect resulting from many such optimized press releases is that the business can get thousands of potential customers passively if everything is done in a right manner. With press releases, getting reach on news sites is very easy. These press releases give traffic, links, and branding, so make use of a good PR distribution service to get all these benefits for your physiotherapy service.
4) Chunk Out More Content, Start Growing Patients
Often simple things that hold potential get overlooked. This is true in the case of content marketing. It is astonishing how posting content regularly on your site will cause a gradual increase in traffic with time and since this will be organic traffic, you will continue to get visitors (potential customers) to your physical therapy website passively after putting the initial efforts. This process can be scaled to a great extent by hiring freelancers for producing the content. Even though the process is slow, considering the fact that traffic will keep flowing passively for a long period of time makes the effort worthwhile. In short, get more content posted, get more visitors, and hence patients.
5) Make GBP, Optimize, and Get More Patients
Slowly many businesses and services are becoming aware of the potential of the “Google Local Pack” displayed on the first page of Google search results. The duo of a completely filled GBP (Google Business Profile) along with good optimization is the secret to getting displayed in the Google Local Pack. Once ranked within this section, patients to your physical therapy practice are bound to grow. There is no scarcity of materials on GBP optimization online. You can go through such materials for implementing the necessary steps yourself or can give out the task to a responsible digital marketing agency.
6) Take a Big Ride with Google Ads
Most of the marketing strategies discussed in this article are either free or low-cost. However, they also take some time to provide results. If you want to take a big ride for your growth, you can opt for the paid advertising route to see results faster. Paid advertising combined with the right platform and the right optimization of ads is the perfect formula for seeing quick success online. The right platform implies those platforms that have real traffic interested in your service. Google ads is the undisputed leader when it comes to the right platform for promoting a physiotherapy practice. Regarding the right optimization of ads, any PPC (pay-per-click) marketing company or freelancer can do it for you.
7) Get Success from Social Media Marketing
One can easily find many case studies of businesses that have grown their business after getting a start from social media. Obviously, any platform with millions of users is good for promoting almost all kinds of businesses and services provided you know the strategy to use the platform to its full potential. The only thing that is required to be successful with social media marketing is to know the ways to promote your physical therapy practice there. Joining local groups, using hashtags, working with influencers and administrators of big groups/pages, sharing useful/creative content consistently, are some of the most popular ways to succeed with social media marketing for your physical therapy center.
8) Do Take the Benefits of Video Marketing
The search results of Google are not just limited to the listing of websites alone, they also show up videos (mostly for low competition and longer keywords). This phenomenon of videos ranking in Google opens a new dimension of getting traffic and customers using videos. For your physical therapy business, you can pay any freelancer in the internet marketing space to compile a list of longer keywords (5-6 words and more) with low competition followed by creating and uploading such videos on channels like YouTube so as to get an additional stream of traffic reaching your website that can be converted to customers.
9) Open New Contacts for Growth Through LinkedIn
Other local doctors can refer cases to you that require specialized care. To introduce your physical therapy service to other local doctors, the platform LinkedIn will come in very handy as it not only has millions of profiles of professionals but it also simplifies the process of making contacts.
10) Pay Attention to Google Search Results to Discover Extra Gems
Make a list of 20-50 keywords related to physical therapy like “physiotherapist near me”, “physical therapy in [your place]”, etc. Start putting these keywords in Google one by one and take note of the top 10 results. You will find some open-ended sites like Yelp that allows other businesses to list their details. Put your physical therapy clinic details on these sites and you will easily start receiving a few extra customers each month from this method along with the bonus of backlinks to your website.
11) Access Already Established Social Base of Influencers
While growing the following of your own social media profile will take time, it is way better to access the follower base of social media influencers. To get the best results, the most important condition here is that the influencer should be from your own city/town and the follower base should also be predominantly local. The content and messages shared by influencers are more effective in impacting their respective followers and this is why influencer marketing works for many businesses and services.
12) Exercise Influence Through Local Print Media
Every local newspaper wants to fill its pages with quality content. When you offer to contribute health-related content to such newspapers weekly/monthly, you are more likely to get a response in the affirmative. While the newspaper will get free expert content coming directly from a trained physiotherapist, your name and physiotherapy practice will start getting recognized more due to the local circulation of such newspapers. So, print media contributions can give you new patients as well as personal brand growth.
13) Bring in More Patients with Free Workshops
There are many takers to free health information coming from an expert in the respective segment. This is why when you announce a free workshop on common ailments/problems related to your area of expertise, you will find many people suffering from that problem attending your workshop. Even though you can give very basic level information for free, a good percentage of your workshop attendees can convert into your patients. So start delivering such workshops regularly either online (webinar) or offline (seminar).
14) Get Repeat Patients and Referrals with Print Newsletters
Health information when offered for free will get many takers. This is the reasoning behind sending print newsletters monthly to your old/past patients. The result of marketing through print newsletters is that your physiotherapy practice will remain active in the minds of your old patients which will help in getting the same customers again (if the need arises) along with a much higher chance of getting your physiotherapy practice referred by them to others.
15) Make Other Physicians Your Referring Source
Sending greeting cards is an old-fashioned yet effective way to spark a line of communication. Collect addresses of physicians in your region by Google search listings and start sending them greeting cards to introduce yourself and your services. This can lead to building connections with many local physicians which will help get you referrals from them regularly.
16) Get Referred by the Most Potent Sources
Places like gyms, yoga studios, etc, and professionals like fitness trainers, chiropractors, nutritionists, etc come across instances of people getting physical discomfort and they can, therefore, start referring such people to you if you are successful in introducing your physiotherapy services to them.
17) Write a Book, Grow Your Practice
The common mass perception about being a book writer is that the book author holds expertise in his/her respective field. So write a book or even an ebook on tips related to problems solved by you (like joint pain, back pain). When you showcase your published book through various marketing sources like website, print advertising, etc, this will surely lead more people to consider you for their physical therapy needs.
18) Get Interviewed at Local News Stations and Radio Stations
Approach local news stations and radio stations and offer your interview through them. You can also propose paid incentives for these incentives. Being interviewed on local news and radio stations can make you stand out from other physiotherapists in your area and can also land you more patients.
19) Support Local Sports and Fitness Events
Sports and fitness are two of the various activities that pose a higher risk of developing pain and other problems in the body. By sponsoring or marketing at sports and fitness-related events, your physiotherapy practice will get noticed by many athletes and participants of such events which will help grow your physiotherapy practice.
20) Use Free Health Camps for Paid Upgrades
Host free health camps to consult people with mobility problems (joint pain, back pain, etc). You can listen to their problems, suggest them few tips, and can offer paid sessions for professional support. Even if a small percentage of the attendees upgrade to paid sessions and support, you will be able to make many new customers in a single day of such a free health camp.
21) Offer Add-Ons, Get More Per Patient
Various accessories and tools might be required during the treatment phase of your patients like rib belts, abdominal belts, etc. Instead of letting your patients buy them from a medical pharmacy, you can start selling them at your own clinic/hospital. This will help you earn more money from your patients.
22) Do Marketing with Success Stories
Take the consent (either free or paid) of a few of your patients who are comfortable in getting their story (of recovering from pain) published on your marketing channels. As people are influenced more by real-life success stories, these success stories when put on your website, social media, print ads, etc will build trust in your physical therapy practice and will help you attract more patients.
23) Give Convenience, Get Preference
In many instances, the pain and discomfort related to the body doesn’t allow a person to personally attend a doctor/clinic. By giving the option of pick and drop from the ambulance or any other vehicle, your physiotherapy practice will get preferred by those patients who have problems visiting you on their own.
24) Use Conventional Offline Promotions Too
The internet usage tendency differs considerably by age and this is why if your business is focused on online marketing only, it will inevitably leave a good chunk of potential clients. While there are many good reasons (cheap costs, high precision in targeting people) why online marketing gives the best return on your marketing budget, you can try the conventional offline marketing strategies if budget is not a big constraint. Offline marketing also complements your online marketing as the trust factor of a business/service increases if it gets noticed by people both digitally and physically. The common methods here are ads on billboards, ads in newspapers, banners, etc.
25) Get Direct Benefits of Review Marketing
For the health sector, reviews are too crucial as a big chunk of potential patients do look for reviews before they take any service affecting their health. With more positive reviews praising your physical therapy, many people searching for physical therapy will become more likely to avail of your service and vice versa. So start gathering reviews by actively asking your patients for the same.
When you start applying these given physical therapy marketing ideas, you will find that the patients arriving at your physical therapy center will start growing. Share this article to show your appreciation. Ask any questions or leave your suggestions below.
