General Marketing Information Archives

17 Physical Therapy Marketing Ideas to Make Your Physical Therapy Website More Credible and Generate More New Patients

Authority, credibility, expertise, and trust are all important factors that patients scrutinize when looking at a physical therapy website. Patients that are unable to develop a sense of trust with you as a physical therapy service provider are less likely to call or request time with you on your appointment request system.

Increase trust and you will increase new patients!

Here’s a quick list of credibility opportunities that you can implement to increase trust between you and potential patients.

In a Physical Therapy Practice, People Judge What They Can’t See Based on What They Can See

Fact is, in a service business, people can’t test drive you or try on your physical therapy services. An outdated website may leave an impression that your practice is out of touch and may not be a clinic of expertise or excellence. I have compiled a list of seventeen things you can do to improve your online appearance and help you successfully convey that you provide exceptional services:

1. Upgrade your website design:

Creating a new physical therapy website design is well within the budget of any practice. It is important for your website to look great on smartphones…so, a responsive website is the right choice. Don’t forget to test all your website’s marketing features on more than one type of smartphone. NOTE: E-rehab clients can get a new website, free of charge, every 3 years.

2. Take real photos of you, your staff, and your patients:

Don’t use stock photos…or at least not ones that look like stock photos. And never, ever use clip art! Hire a professional photographer to take some pictures for you or license unique images from a pro, and you’ll immediately upgrade the appearance of your site.

3. Update your font:

Studies have shown that your website font actually impacts the believability of the claims you make on your website. Font matters! Make sure you’re using fonts that are proven winners on the web and that are big enough to easily read.

4. Make it easy for patients to communicate with you:

With smartphones, apps, sms, email, chat, and social networks, there are many ways for patients to connect with your office. Don’t miss out on vital communications by ignoring some communications channels.

5. Make sure your phone number is on top and on every page:

Your phone number should be visible above the fold on every page of your website along with a click-to-call function when people visit your site on their smartphone.

6. Add a live chat option:

Adding a live chat option is easy (and free too!) with a system like tawk.to .

7. Don’t want the commitment of live chat; add a bot:

Chatbots are a popular way to automate the interactivity on your physical therapy website. With a physical therapy chatbot, you can answer many of the questions that your patients may have before they even come in to see you. It’s a great way to educate your patients and it’s a great place for patients to submit an appointment request as well. We find that 1 in 10 people that use an E-rehab Physical Therapy Chatbot are scheduling an appointment.

8. Make sure you have a map that’s easy to access:

Make sure your address(es) is easy to see. There’s nothing more frustrating than looking up a local practice only to find that you don’t know where they are located. Make sure you have your address permanently placed on your site above the fold and also have a Google Map available.

9. Leverage your great service:

I rarely meet a practice owner that doesn’t think they provide great service. Fact is, if a practice has been around for five or more years, they’re probably right. If they weren’t providing great service, they would have gone out of business. But here’s the problem; it doesn’t matter how much YOU tell others that you have a great practice, that you are the best, that you are number one…it will never be as effective as the social proof that other patients can and will share about your practice. Encourage your happy patients to share the word about the success they had with you.

10. Include patient ratings and reviews:

I’m going to spend a little extra time on this by leading with a question. If you were a consumer that needed a locksmith, an urgent care practice, emergency plumber, orthopedist, or a physical therapist, would you look for one on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or Twitter? Out of the literally hundreds I have asked, I’ve only had one person say yes. Another couple said they might ask for a referral from Facebook. My point is, and your web stats will prove this to you, people check PT practices out online, most of the time, by either Googling you, or by going directly to your website. You may be asking, “What’s your point Dave?” My point is that there are two places that you want to have your ratings and reviews for prospective new patients; on Google and on your website. Start by getting ratings and reviews on those two platforms (and in most cases, it won’t matter if you have reviews anywhere else).

NOTE: Of course, this is how the E-rehab system works – we help practices capture ratings and reviews to be displayed on Google or your website. We also will import Google reviews and post them on your website as well.

11. Add patient video testimonials:

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth millions. If you have a bunch of positive ratings & reviews, undoubtedly, some will question their authenticity. You can avoid any doubt and demonstrate the happiness and satisfaction of your patients with video testimonials. Click here to see an example.

NOTE: We have a patient video testimonial system that is so fast and easy to use, anyone can use it. Contact me and I’ll show you that it’s as simple as it gets and there isn’t any emailing or uploading of videos.

12. Highlight your specialties:

If you offer services that are uncommon, such as aquatic therapy, women’s health, vestibular rehab, concussion treatment, etc., make sure that you have a dedicated web page about these services. Also make sure that you include the service and your city in the page title and body so it’s more likely to rank on Google.

13. Highlight professional awards and association affiliations:

Have you won a Top Rated or Best Of award? Make sure that you display the badge on your website. While most of these “best of” websites have no relevant criteria to judge the quality of a practice, they do give badges away to many practices. Why do they do this? They want you to put the badge on your website that links to them so they will rank better in the search engines for industry searches like “best physical therapy in Salt Lake City” or “top physical therapy clinic in New Orleans”. Yes, it’s a joke/game, but if you are lucky enough to get the arbitrary award, add it to your website. It can’t hurt. I do recommend that you simply add the image but don’t link back to the ratings and review site.

14. Personalize your website:

Today’s patients want to see who will be treating them. Here’s how you can add a personal touch to the experience:

Staff biographies

Make sure that you have updated staff biographies on your website. Include the schools that staff member attended, certifications, specialized con-ed, types of patient conditions they like to treat, and then humanize the staffer. Tell viewers what they like to do in their spare time, mention some details about family, and involvement in the community if it’s relevant.

Behind-the-scenes

By providing video and pictures to show viewers what happens at the practice, a patient can more easily visualize their own visit. You may also want to showcase any unique company cultural traits. Both of these will result in impressing to the patient that your physical therapy practice is relatable and trustworthy.

Pictures of your great service

We are frequently asked what kinds of pictures should be on a physical therapy website. I suggest you share images of what you do best…patient education, manual therapy, and the sophisticated therapeutic exercises/neuromuscular reeducation that you use every day. For various services pages, take specific photos of the above three categories and include them on the respective services pages.

15. Be a healthcare professional:

A lot of the tips above are designed to make your business feel more relatable and friendly. But when it comes to opening up their wallets, customers still want to know you are a clinical professional. Here are ways to show you mean business:

Have a secure domain

This is a big one! Invest in an SSL certificate and secure your domain. It will help with SEO, build viewer trust, and HTTPS 2.0 protocols can speed up your site too.

Make sure you address the payment, billing, and co-insurance payment processes on your website

Show that you stand behind your physical therapy services with confidence!

Make your Privacy Policy visible

Make it clear that you’re going to protect their valuable information.

16. Make it clear how to reach support:

Let them know how you will handle things when they go wrong. When it comes to healthcare services, most complaints are centered around money. Clearly communicating how you verify insurance benefits, how the billing process works, and communicating in a timely manner can go a long way toward building trust.

17. Take Action!

It’s so important to communicate credibility and trust to prospective patients that are viewing you on the web. In today’s complex, competitive, and the oftentimes confusing marketplace, businesses need to go above and beyond to set themselves apart. Hopefully, the tips mentioned above will help your physical therapy practice stand out.

Contact Us if You Need Help

If you need help, don’t hesitate to give E-REHAB a call at (760) 585-9097. Since 2003, we’ve been helping PT private practices get the word out to their communities.

2 Easy Ways to Improve Your Physical Therapy Online Marketing Content

physical therapy online marketing

“Content is king” is a common, hard truth that marketing strategists rally behind when talking about physical therapy online marketing. Any good website builds quality content in order to improve its ranking and support its marketing strategy at an optimal level. But what actually makes content “king,” and how can you improve it? For one, it’s not about the quantity of content: even if you blog every day for a year, it won’t draw in visitors and patients if it doesn’t have the right content. With that said, we bring you these two easy-to-integrate tips for making sure your content is king:

1. Get into (Info)Graphics

People love visuals, whether it’s an infographic or a candid photo. Your physical therapy online marketing content becomes more valuable when there’s an attached graphic that draws people in. In addition, infographics in all their forms—photo lists, data visualizations, timelines, photo-filled posts and articles—make people more inclined to read through, share or become convinced by the content. As we have seen in our own physical therapy work and the science behind it, visuals and visualizing treatment can be an important component to healing and rehabilitation. Why not apply the importance of visuals to your physical therapy online marketing content?

If your blog or website doesn’t currently have many photos or graphics, it’s time to add them. To start with, add professional photos of your staff in action on your “About” or “Staff” pages. [pullquote1 align=”right” textColor=”#000000″]Your physical therapy office has a wealth of information that’s easy to transform into images or graphics; it’s just a matter of finding the right content and properly distributing it[/pullquote1] You can also create your own flow charts about common treatments performed at your clinic and publish them, or provide data charts to help patients visualize their healing process. You should realize that your physical therapy office has a wealth of information that’s easy to transform into images or graphics; it’s just a matter of finding the right content and properly distributing it. There are many different online tools that can help you create infographics, but hiring someone to add creative, unique and personal content will also go a long way in improving your website.

When posting any sort of image, remember to provide descriptive metadata. This helps search engines properly “read” the image and allows it to pop up in searches.

2. Do Link Building the Right Way

You can think of link building in two ways: inbound and outbound. Link building in general can involve a long list of tactics, but at its most basic level, you should link relevant parts of your content back to other pages on your site. This is how to utilize inbound marketing, and some examples of how this works include the following:

Did you mention another office or location of your physical therapy practice? Link that phrase back to the location page on your website.
Did you refer to a post you made about a specific injury from last month? Link it so your readers can find it easily.
Did you mention your monthly physical therapy newsletter as a resource for special offers and tips? Link the sign up form for the newsletters in that sentence.

This type of inbound link building helps prioritize your message and site, and keeps people from navigating away from it. By providing the relevant links on the same page or blog post, you’ll improve the traffic of your website.

When it comes to outbound linking, you’ll want to make it easy to share and spread your content to others. Make sure that you’re automatically sharing your content on your social media profiles, or making it easy for people to share on various platforms directly from your website. For those with a budget, tools like Bitly are great for sharing shorter links that are optimized for social media and mobile users, and they also allow you see the analytics for each of those pages.

It’s also important to remember that there is a limit to link building: going overboard and providing a link to every phrase can actually penalize your site. This is especially true for websites that pay to generate links, as many analytics tools—like Google—will see it as spam and flag your website as a result. Therefore, it’s best to make sure that each of your links are relevant to the phrase used and distributed in a natural way.

We Can Offer Additional Physical Therapy Online Marketing Tips

[squeeze_box4]By focusing on these two strategies, you will easily boost the quality of your physical therapy online marketing content and present a much higher-quality and professional-looking website. If you still feel you could use some assistance with improving your online marketing, contact us today. We can offer additional tips or establish a specific strategy that addresses all important aspects of your website.[/squeeze_box4]

Make Your Physical Therapy Website Local SEO Friendly

The phrase “location, location, location” doesn’t only apply to real estate. When you design your physical therapy website, focusing on your location with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind is an absolute must, whether you have one location or multiple offices spread across the state.

The thing is, you can’t just have your physical address posted on your website and call it a day. There are multiple strategies that you should use to help you promote and improve your local SEO. By utilizing all of these practices, you’ll improve your reach across the Internet and among local searchers that are in need of your physical therapy services. Read on to find out how to make your physical therapy website more “SEO-friendly.”

Make Your Location a Prominent SEO Keyword

Your address or location should not be listed only in the header or footer of your website. Instead, you should focus on integrating it into your SEO strategy by putting it in key elements of your website. For instance, title headings for your webpages can be SEO-optimized instead of just giving them generic titles. Here’s an example: instead of using “Our Office” for your location page, optimize it with your location to “Our Brooklyn Office.” Other elements you can optimize include headings, titles, tags, image tags and other HTML and metadata descriptions. The more you use the name of your location throughout your website, the more optimized it will become.

Make Separate Local Pages for Each Location

If you have multiple offices, it’s important to provide separate pages that are dedicated specifically to these locations instead of just publishing content for multiple locations on the same page.[pullquote4 bgColor=”#ea8400″ textColor=”#000000″]Having multiple local pages not only helps people find the right location for their needs, but also improves your searchability across different places.[/pullquote4] Having multiple local pages not only helps people find the right location for their needs, but also improves your searchability across different places.

On each separate page, also be sure to include location-specific descriptions and content, instead of copying and pasting the same generic description or your mission statement. A good practice is to include local events you’ve sponsored in that area or describe the location in relation to special features or physical landmarks to make the description rich with local SEO.

The same should be done with other location listings: have separate pages on Google+, Yelp, Yellow Pages and other sites for each of your locations, too.

Attempt Address Accuracy Across All Map Listings

Search engines prefer consistency, especially when it comes to contact information like telephone numbers and addresses. To reach the most people, make sure that your practice is listed with the same contact information in every listing. For example, if your physical therapy office is located on “43 Main Street,” decide whether or not you will spell out “Street” or abbreviate it to “St.,” and stick to this designation throughout all uses of your address. The same goes for your practice name. The more consistent your name, number and address are, the more likely your website will be cited correctly and found.

Collect Reviews

Reviews are also an important part of building your practice’s local reputation. Besides adding testimonials to your website, you should also try to gather reviews for your local listings, such as your Google+ local page.

One of the best ways to get a Google+ review from your patients is to kindly request that they add a review before leaving your office. Set up a laptop or tablet that they can log into, and give them a few guidelines to help them write a short review. Not only does this give you a better spotlight in Google rankings, but they can also be helpful for you and your office. A great tool to use is Whitespark’s Review Generator, which will print out instructions for computer or smartphone use based on your office’s information.

Improving Your Local SEO Can Better Establish Your Physical Therapy Website

[highlight1 bgColor=”#000000″ textColor=”#3391ff”]Overall, improving the local SEO of your physical therapy website can make a big difference in your online efforts and significantly draw in new visitors that may become patients. By establishing your local SEO presence, your potential patients will be able to find you and your current patients can lend their own experience and recommendations to your practice. To get more help with your physical therapy website, contact us at E-Rehab today, and we can show you how to elevate your SEO to the next level.[/highlight1]

Three Tactics for Physical Therapy Online Marketing

physical therapy online marketing

Creating a comprehensive marketing strategy is easy when you have a big budget. But when you’re a small private practice and just getting started in the online space, you need a strategy that costs time, not money to boost your physical therapy online marketing.

By learning how to produce the right content and where to publish it, you can better position your practice on the search engine results pages, which will help you capture more web traffic.

Here are three physical therapy online marketing tactics that will catapult your web presence:

1. Link Build with Other Sites

Whenever a credible outside source links to one of your web pages, Google counts it as a vote of confidence for the content on that page. The more links to your website’s content, the more credible your website appears to Google, which subsequently leads to a higher search engine results page rank. [pullquote1 align=”left” textColor=”#000000″]The more links to your website’s content, the more credible your website appears to Google, which subsequently leads to a higher search engine results page rank [/pullquote1] But how do you get other sites to link to yours?

When you’re just getting started online, finding an audience can be difficult, especially when it’s as niche of a field as physical therapy. Luckily, you’re not the only one trying to build an online presence in this space. Start by contacting your service providers and business partners and ask for them to link to your site. Many businesses are happy to display work they’ve done for past clients on their website in order to attract new business. Linking to each others’ websites in this manner creates a great opportunity to link build.

Another way to build links is to search for any mentions of your practice that are not directly linked to your website. A quick email to the author of the post can score you another link back to your site.

2. Utilize Blog Writing

When you’re asking for links to your website from partners, you’re going to need something for them to link to. Hosting a blog on your website is a great solution for finding a place to publish more content. While this is definitely a time-consuming task, it’s actually quite vital to your overall physical therapy online marketing strategy.

Publishing more content to your website using a blog will help you capture some of that all-important search traffic. [pullquote1 align=”right” textColor=”#000000″]Publishing more content to your website using a blog will help you capture some of that all-important search traffic [/pullquote1] A good place to start blogging for a physical therapy clinic is to produce content that answers some of the most common questions your patients have about your practice. How-to blogs, reviews and top tip lists can answer those questions in a timeless fashion so they are always relevant to your readers.

Another way to leverage blogging as a tool to drive traffic to your website is to be a guest blogger for a blog that’s already established in the online space. If you’re an expert in the field of physical therapy, this can be a great opportunity to show what you know while also earning a link back to your website. In a similar way, you can ask someone else to guest blog on your site and promote it through their online channels.

3. Produce Engaging Content to Improve Your Physical Therapy Online Marketing

When you’re just starting out with your physical therapy online marketing strategy, you need to produce content that sets you apart from the rest of the crowd[pullquote1 align=”left” textColor=”#000000″]Focus your efforts on producing content that sets you apart from the rest of the crowd[/pullquote1]. One way to accomplish this is to publish certain pages that are more engaging to your audience than straightforward text posts.

Infographics, pictures and videos are great examples of engaging content, but they can be intimidating to make for new users. Lucky for you, creating engaging content doesn’t have to be difficult. Start by looking through your existing online content, specifically the evergreen posts that are always relevant. You can recycle those posts into more creative ways of displaying the same information.

[squeeze_box3]Learning how to market your practice online can be intimidating if you don’t have any experience in the field. For more information about how your clinic can benefit from physical therapy online marketing, contact us today, and we can help you every step of the way.[/squeeze_box3]

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]

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]

Three Ways to Use Your Newsletter to Market to Doctors

Marketing to doctors is especially challenging. They are a very busy bunch that tend to be quite skeptical of marketing materials. You can overcome these obstacles, however, with an effective newsletter strategy. Newsletters are an excellent way to position your physical therapy practice as a true resource. Here are three ways to accomplish this.

Be Informative

The less “salesy,” the better. You want your physician readers to feel you are a trusted resource. You want them to feel your newsletter contains information useful to their practice, not just content about your product or service. Secondly, quality content in your printed newsletter can be recycled into quality content on your blog or website. By posting an electronic version of your newsletter on your website, you open your potential audience up to any physician performing a search engine query about a topic you have covered. In fact, according to American Medical News, 86 percent of physicians use the Internet to gather health information. Once you’ve created quality content, integrate your printed newsletter with your electronic formats to reach both audiences. Here’s a sampling of what you might consider including in your newsletter:

Features from industry blogs (doctors want to know what their peers are doing)
Recent studies and research (clinical trials and surveys)
Tips and how-tos
Valuable resources (include website addresses to other online resources)
Company news (feature expansions, new hires, awards and new products)
Educational opportunities

Be Scannable

The average person spends 51 seconds reading a newsletter. Every article is not going to interest every reader. Have a format that is easily scannable, so that doctors can quickly glance through the content. Use bullet points, brief summaries or call-to-action boxes. Use images, but not too many. Keep the layout clean, with straight lines. Give readers an option to find out more by directing them to your website or blog. Be sure your web addresses aren’t complicated with multiple backslashes. Long web links can easily be given a short URL for printing purposes. Technology issues are the quickest way to lose a reader. You don’t want them to get frustrated when trying to type in a really long web address with a lot of signs and symbols.

Gather Input

The best way to start any conversation is to ask a question. An effective marketing strategy involves gathering input. If you were selling a product in-person, you would not jump right into talking about what you have to offer. An effective salesperson gets to know their client. They take a few minutes to ask the physician about his or her needs and challenges. Then, they craft their message based on how their product can address those needs and challenges. While not in-person, newsletters can do the same. Use surveys to gather data. The result is two-fold. First, your physician readers will perceive you as interested in the success of their practice. Go beyond asking, “what articles interest you?” Ask about the techniques and strategies they find effective. Summarize the results in future issues. Doctors will see your publication as a way for them to share information and learn about what their peers are doing. Secondly, you’ll receive valuable data on which to base future newsletters. Don’t frustrate your readers by making them search for a way to contact you. Give options for paper and online submission. Make submission very easy with a pre-paid, tear-out card. Each issue, whether it contains a survey or not, should contain clear contact information, via phone, e-mail, website or mail.

E-rehab.com specializes in helping physical therapists market their business to physicians. Let us help create your marketing strategy. Contact us for more tips about creating an eye-catching newsletter.

A Simple Physical Therapy Social Media Marketing Strategy

Digital marketing has quickly become the most common and fastest way to reach a wide audience. However, simply having a website isn’t enough to reach a vast audience. We recommend you have a simple physical therapy social media marketing strategy. A 2014 study performed by Social Media Examiner found that a whopping 97% of marketers were using social media to expose and sell their services; meaning that if you aren’t currently using social media to market your business, you are already behind. But it takes more than just opening a Facebook account to succeed at physical therapy social media marketing. Here are some things you need to know about social media marketing so that you can take your physical therapy clinic to the next level by reaching and impacting a wider range of audience:

Use Multiple Social Media Sites

It might seem like everyone in the universe has a Facebook account, but this isn’t necessarily true. Individuals tend to favor one social media outlet over the others, so someone who is very active on Twitter might miss your Facebook announcements and promotions. To optimize your business’s outreach, set up accounts on all the major social media outlets: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Stay Active

Simply having social media sites isn’t enough to draw attention or business from followers. You need to update regularly with new information, exciting news in your office, and any news events that are relevant to your practice, your community, and the profession. But don’t panic if you don’t have time to personally make these updates. E-rehab takes care of Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ updates for you so your pages will always be active and current.

Engage With Followers

Consumers are more likely to trust brands and companies they follow on social media than those that they don’t, largely because social media offers a personal, human factor that just isn’t present in direct marketing or even commercial campaigns. People are likely to lodge complaints or offer high praise on your social media sites, and these need to be addressed. Apologizing publicly to a dissatisfied client on Facebook or Twitter demonstrates that you listen to your clients and care about their feedback. Further, you can openly discuss any new policies or strategies that will take place based on the feedback. Likewise, accepting compliments and graciously saying Thank You shows followers that your business takes the time to read and respond to clients long after they have left your office.

Word of Mouth

We all know that personal referrals are the most important way for PT practices to generate new patients. When your patients respond to your social media announcements, they end up referring you to their followers, meaning you are reaching a much wider range of audience than through other forms of marketing. The best part is, you don’t have to do any extra work to reach this audience.

[info_box]Is Your Competition Already Ahead of You? Do a quick Google search for your competitors, and you will likely find that they are already using social media to market their business. Don’t waste any more time giving them the social media advantage and taking clients away from you. Contact us today, and let E-rehab work with you to develop a complete social media campaign for your physical therapy office. We will develop and maintain a customized Facebook account, a customized Twitter account, and a customized Google+ channel. “Not having time” to keep up with your social media accounts just isn’t an excuse anymore since we do all the work for you. All you have to do is sit back and reap the benefits of getting additional business for your physical therapy office thanks to your social media marketing campaign.[/info_box]

Providing Value in Your Physical Therapy Marketing

A Value Proposition to Offer Your Primary Care Physician Referral Sources

There are a number of studies that demonstrate the value that physical therapists offer. Here’s an infographic/newspaper ad I put together for a local practice.

Reminder: when you do create some physical therapy marketing collateral, make sure you have a call to action as well…your phone number at the bottom of the ad should do it.

References:

Gellhorn AC, Chan L, Martin B, Friedly J. Management patterns in acute low back pain: the role of physical therapy. Spine (Phila Pa 1976). 2012;37(9):775–782 [PMC free article] [PubMed]

Fritz JM, Childs JD, Wainner RS, Flynn TW. Primary care referral of patients with low back pain to physical therapy: impact on future health care utilization and costs. Spine (Phila Pa 1976). 2012;37(25):2114–2121 [PubMed]

10 Observations About PT Promotion from My Travels

I just returned home from 3 consecutive weekends of travel to different areas of the United States. The topic I spoke on was PT promotion in today’s online marketplace. It’s always nice to get out and meet with my colleagues…those on the front line. I wanted to share some of my observations:

1. Physical therapists seem so concerned about payment and things that they can’t control.

2. There was some negative conversation about online marketing services, a few that start with a “Y”, that didn’t work for anyone that tried them.

3. Even though there was a strong desire to have patients directly access physical therapists, some of the PTs I spoke to clearly couldn’t articulate their value. In other words, they didn’t have an “elevator speech” that was top-of-mind.

4. There were plenty of practice owners that were doing quite well and were happy so share with others about their success.

5. Clearly, physical therapy is still a vastly underutilized health care profession and service.

6. When it comes to online marketing and consumer perceptions and behaviors, PTs still have a lot to learn.

7. PTs still don’t understand how consumers digitally interact with their practice and the opportunities these interactions present.

8. One of my pet peeves reared is ugly head. More than once PTs referenced, in my opinion, an incorrect comparison about consumers and their willingness to pay for “personal trainers” but not pay their copay. Which leads to my next point…value.

9. Almost every presentation at WebPT’s Ascend event or one of the others made mention of “value”. PTs being able to communicate their value. The value of PT before drugs, imaging and surgery. The value of marketing to patients, the public, and our referral sources.

10. When it comes to marketing…there’s lots of confusion.

In summary, with PTs wanting to have consumers directly access their services, we are seeing an groundswell of ideas, successes, marketing opportunities, and supporting services emerge in the market.

Considering consumer behavior, there are many opportunities but they have to match the market’s needs:

8 of 10 patients are going online these days for healthcare information.
There are an estimated 150 million smart phones in use in the US
Social media is part of consumers’ daily life
Ratings and reviews are the second most trusted form of advertising.