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5 More Physical Therapy Online Marketing Terms Explained in Simple English

physical therapy online marketing

So, you’ve decide to start focusing on marketing your physical therapy practice online. You know you need to set up a website, a blog and social media pages. You now understand what search engine optimization (SEO) refers to and why it’s necessary to include keywords throughout your website, but there may still be some physical therapy online marketing terms that you don’t understand.

For instance, you may have heard the term web content, but don’t know exactly what that means. The same may be true for inline or outbound marketing, terms you know are important but don’t completely “get.” While you may not think that you need to know all these terms, it never hurts to have a basic comprehension of the ins and outs of physical therapy online marketing in order to better promote your practice. This is a field that’s likely to only grow in the future, so the more you understand it now, the better you’re going to be prepared for what’s ahead.

5 More Physical Therapy Online Marketing Terms Explained

With that said, we present you with 5 more physical therapy online marketing terms explained in simple English:

1. Web Content

Web content refers to all the components that make up a website. This includes the written words on the website, as well as all the images and videos, if any are present. Written content is most important and most likely to help you get found by patients, since search engines like Google and Bing only search through words and can’t do so with images. Good written content with lots of effective keywords is therefore all that’s necessary to initially attract visitors to your site. Once they get there, though, you should keep them engaged with good images, video, layout, and other attractive elements.

2. Content Marketing

The aim of content marketing is to draw more traffic to your website. As mentioned above, this is largely done by using good written content with a number of keywords embedded in it, preferably in a natural way. But you should also consider using good images for content marketing. Using images with people in them, striking images with lots of contrast and images that are strictly relevant to your subject matter can all help to keep your reader’s attention and keep them coming back to your website.

3. Listicle

What are you reading right now? You got it. This very blog is called a listicle, or a numbered list. In this case, the list reviews physical therapy online marketing terms, but listicles can be used for just about anything. For example, “5 Great Physical Therapists from History” or “7 Types of Cutting Edge Physical Therapy that Might Be Able to Help You” can both be used as attractive titles for listicles. The advantage of listicles is that people can skip over the things they already know and read only those that they are unfamiliar with.

4. Outbound Marketing

Traditional marketing is all outbound. It reaches out to the consumer and tries to sell a certain product or service. Consider the advertisements you see in magazines, on billboards and on TV. Did you ask for these advertisements to be shown to you? Of course not. In fact, you were given no choice in the matter, and yet at times they do catch your eye and you end up buying some of those products. In the online world, you may also see similar advertisements on websites fairly often, and sometimes you may receive emails that try to sell you certain products. These are all examples of outbound marketing.

5. Inbound Marketing

These days, people prefer to practice inbound marketing rather than outbound marketing. In inbound marketing, you’re not forcing the patient to look at your advertisements, but instead, you just wait until they reach out to you. How can you accomplish this? It could happen via word of mouth, on social media or in some other way. There are many ways in which a patient could hear about your physical therapy services, and any of these can cause them to look your practice up online. When they do this, you need to have a website, blog and social media pages ready to give them all the information they need. This state of readiness to serve a patient and provide them with information is referred to as inbound marketing.

[titled_box title=”We’re Here to Help Your Physical Therapy Online Marketing” bgColor=”#000000″ textColor=”#000000″]This blog is just the beginning, and improving your physical therapy online marketing campaign takes regular, focused effort. If it seems like too large a task for you to handle on your own, allow E-Rehab to step in and offer our assistance. Contact us today to ask about our services and how we can revamp your practice’s online marketing.[/titled_box]

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]

Physical Therapy Newsletters Can Help You Earn Loyal Patients

physical therapy newsletters

If you’re not already creating and distributing effective physical therapy newsletters, it’s high time that you start. Newsletters have the power to transform new and possibly reluctant patients into loyalists that support your physical therapy practice with their repeat business and spread the good word regarding their positive experiences with you.

Establish Your Expertise

Using newsletters, especially when they are coupled with a strong online presence, will make you look like an authoritative expert in the field of physical therapy. The more you build this sort of presence, the more patients will come to you to learn about the latest treatments and solutions to their physical problems.

[highlight4]Newsletters are one easiest and most effective ways to establish your expertise. [/highlight4]The average web user is bombarded with advertisements and white noise on a constant basis, but you can break away from this buzz by utilizing effective and engaging newsletters on your blog or website. Newsletters are not only a means to encourage patients to come back to your clinic, but they are also an opportunity to educate, inform and advise. Here are some tips to help you implement attractive physical therapy newsletters to keep your patients engaged:

Many Recipients Open Emails Because of Catchy Headlines

Emailing effective newsletters does not have to be complicated or obtrusive as a busy physical therapist. Action words, verbs, and catchy headline can bring about positive results. Try to incorporate these in each of your headlines and ask yourself if it sounds like an email you’d want to open if it arrived in your inbox. If the answer is “no,” you should change the headline to something more appealing.

It’s All in the Name

Email marketing agencies and software allows you to create highly-personalized emails with each patient’s name and information. Studies have shown that click-through rates are actually much higher when your patient’s name is in the subject line. This sort of lead generation is a powerful way to keep patients coming back in the long term, which is much easier to do than reeling in new patients. As a form of lead generation, email newsletters are a highly effective form of patient retention.

Newsletters Allow You to Segment and Maintain Relationships with Your Patients

Segmenting is the process of breaking up your subscribers into smaller subgroups, creating highly engaging newsletters with a relevant call to action. Email marketing agencies can help you build and create sign-up forms that allow you to monitor who signed up to your newsletters, which can effectively track their interests. You can use segmenting and specialized subgroups to create highly appealing emails pertaining to recent news, upcoming events or the impact that you have in the local community.

[pullquote2 textColor=”#000000″]You don’t want to be the type of business that reaches out to patients only in times of need; instead, you want to bet he omnipresent physical therapist that is willing to advise and is the go-to person for the latest in your medical community.[/pullquote2] As a physical therapist, your focus should always be on maintaining relationships and underlining the importance of physical health. You don’t want to be the type of business that reaches out to patients only in times of need; instead, you want to bet he omnipresent physical therapist that is willing to advise and is the go-to person for the latest in your medical community. The key is to providing email newsletters that are valuable and different than other written content. Newsletters should be unique and related but a separate identity from your blog and website.

Importance of Mobile-Optimized Email Physical Therapy Newsletters

The amount of emails opened on smartphones has jumped from 8% in 2011 to 53% in 2014, and that ratio increases every year. It’s important to consider the mobile friendliness of your newsletters. Email-responsive designs will future-proof the promotional aspect of your career. With only 19% of marketers utilizing a responsive email design, it’s integral that you utilize this sort of technology. Make sure to work with an agency that understands the importance of using mobile-friendly newsletters to distribute informative content.

[info_box]To learn more about how E-Rehab can jump-start your website SEO, physical therapy newsletters and social media marketing, contact us or follow us @erehab.[/info_box]

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]

Physical Therapy Clinic Marketing: Using Social Media to Learn About Prospective Patients

If you haven’t already noticed, we’ve reached a point where the process of physical therapy clinic marketing now has to include social media, almost by default. While this should hopefully be clear to you, what it means may be a little different from what you might expect.

Why You Need Two Accounts in Physical Therapy Clinic Marketing

Many experts are now recommending that if you own a physical therapy practice, you should create two separate accounts. One is a personal account for yourself that connects to another account, which is designed specifically for your clinic. You can see the logic in this, even if places like LinkedIn consolidate both of these onto one page. [pullquote3 align=”right” textColor=”#000000″]Nurturing relationships online is a growing way to generate leads on social media so you have a more targeted audience for your later marketing content.[/pullquote3] Nevertheless, you give yourself an advantage by having a personal account because it’s there where you can start conversations with prospective patients. Nurturing relationships online is a growing way to generate leads on social media so you have a more targeted audience for your later marketing content.

But when you start conversations on places like Twitter, how do you approach talking to someone? Instead of trying to hard-sell your physical therapy practice, the best approach should be a more natural conversation that simply proves your expertise in the field of physical therapy. At the same time, you can use these social media conversations as a way to create a patient persona so you understand what they’re looking for in doctors providing the best physical therapy techniques.

Where Should You Start Your Social Media Conversations?

Conversations can take place on any social media platform, though Twitter is one of the best places to search for discussions and join in. Through a simple hashtag search, you can find conversations underway related to physical therapy.

Because Twitter has discussions underway about virtually everything, you likely won’t have trouble finding numerous people discussing physical therapy issues. When you join in on a conversation, make it a natural progression without mentioning how you’re a physical therapist or own a clinic. Any hint that you’re trying to sell yourself could risk you being blocked.

This is why it’s important to write a compelling Twitter bio so those who click on your profile can see that you already have credibility. As you start a conversation, you can start to learn some things about the type of patients you want to connect with. Here’s some things to find out about prospective patients so you can further target your marketing toward them.

What You Can Determine from General Information

Once you become friends with the above people on Twitter, they’ll start following you. Don’t let the conversations end, though, because you’ll be surprised at how much you’ll get to know about them as you continue talking with one another.

You’ll want to know a few things outside of general points like their age and what they do for a living. Here are some areas to focus on:

1. Pain Points

Finding out the pain points of a prospective patient is essential because you determine exactly what kind of physical pain they’re experiencing and how you can help solve it. Once you get to know your followers, you can find out what kind of physical pain they’re having and how it affects them during their work day.

2. Is Pain Stopping Them from Reaching a Goal?

As an adjunct to pain points, is the physical pain in any person above preventing them from accomplishing something? Find out what that pain is, because your marketing content can hone in on this to prove your techniques. You can do this later by showing past examples of solving pain problems so patients could function physically again in their careers.

3. What They Expect from Physical Therapy

Try to find out what physical therapy techniques these prospective patients are looking for in particular. Can they wrap their busy schedules around yours? Finding out what they expect can help you tweak things further in your physical therapy clinic marketing content so you attract like-minded people to your social media accounts without seeking them first.

[info_box]If this is a new pursuit for you and your practice, it may sound a bit daunting at first. This response is normal, but that’s exactly where we can come in to help. Contact E-Rehab once you’re ready to take control of your physical therapy clinic marketing, so we can assist you by finding unique social media marketing tactics for your physical therapy practice.[/info_box]

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]

Video Marketing for Physical Therapists: Targeting the Right Patients and Bringing Transparency

The process of video marketing for physical therapists is one that requires showcasing exactly what makes you different from your competition. No doubt you have many other physical therapy clinics competing with you in your town or city. You might have even lost many of your patients to your competition because your competitors offered something different or innovative.

While this might sound like pure business logic, the real problem is your competitors either do a better job of marketing, have stronger relationships with referring physicians, or have some sort of financial relationship with doctors/hospitals.

One way to “even the playing field” is to use video to share your high quality care.

In a visual culture, video marketing is one of the best methods of bringing differentiating yourself and what better way to do it than with patient testimonials on camera.

Patients who seek physical therapy want more transparency about how your clinic operates. They also want educational information about what you provide and what sets you apart from others. Even if you don’t feel like you are a leader with your treatment techniques or outcomes, patients still want to learn more about you. Video is a great way to create a long-term competitive advantage.

Many who seek physical therapy do so out of necessity or due to physical pain. So the video marketing you do needs a serious approach. How do you properly convey who you are, though, in a marketing video?

Some Topics for Your Videos

Most companies have a mission statement. Creating a video about your mission statement and your goals for patients is important.
Telling stories about what led you to pursue a career in physical therapy is a great lead-in for patients as a way toward more trust.
Telling stories about patients you’ve worked with in the past can help demonstrate your empathy.
Even better is when you equate your founding to perhaps your own physical ailments. If a specific physical therapy experience helped you overcome a past medical issue or injury, this enhances your sense of understanding about how other patients feel when they seek physical therapy.
Expert interviews are great ways to establish authority and differentiate your self from the competition. Pick topics that you specialize in and share your knowledge with your community (see the example below).

Transparency About How Your Clinic is Run

Secrecy in any company, especially a medical clinic, frequently turns off prospective patients. They want to see what you do. With consent of your medical staff (and even patients), footage of actual physical therapy techniques taking place is a great way to share your clinical expertise, culture, and to improve transparency.

Social Proof

As we have mentioned before, and as stated in the Neilson’s Trust in Advertising study, ratings and reviews come in second or third when it comes to consumer action and advertising trust. If ratings and reviews are trusted, certainly patient video testimonials are also going to be a great trust builder for your practice.

Targeting the Right Patient Demographic

In Dan Kennedy’s book, No B.S. Direct Marketing: The Ultimate, No Holds Barred, Kick Butt, Take No Prisoners Direct Marketing for Non-direct Marketing Businesses , he provides readers with some simple yet crucial advice when creating your marketing message. Match your message to your market and use the right medium. You should absolutely apply these simple principles to your video marketing efforts. If you are trying to reach the senior demographic, use senior testimonials, and have them discuss their success with their “senior” diagnoses (e.g. stenosis, osteoarthritis, balance disorders, etc.). If you are targeting younger athletes, then consider using video but delivering it via 15 second snippets on Instagram.

Use Keywords in Your Videos

We recommend that you also use specialized keywords (both short and longtail) to increase the likelihood that your videos will rank better in YouTube and in some cases, even on Google. You can increase the chance that your videos will rank by posting them on your social networking platforms and encouraging likes, comments, and shares.

Video is a great online marketing tool, no question about it. It’s well within the financial reach of any physical therapy private practice. When you create your videos, consider your demographics, use video to share transparency about your clinic, and use them for social proof or patient testimonials. Good video can create a competitive advantage for you so have fun with it.

Local Physical Therapy Social Media Marketing 101

You’re already a talented and invested physical therapist. You’ve probably got a steady stream of patients who trust you and are seeing results. What’s next? How can you grow your client base and keep your patients healthy, even after their sessions are wrapped up? We suggest physical therapy social media marketing.

You don’t need to be a trained marketing professional to develop your online community. In fact, sometimes that authentic novice approach can help your business stand out among all the cookie cutter stick-to-the-book traditional tactics. So, in between sessions, give a few of these channels a try.

Pinterest

If you’re not on Pinterest already and think it’s just for crafters and bakers, it’s time to get reacquainted. Pinterest was the fastest growing social network over the past year, and it has qualities that you won’t quite find on Facebook. “At their core, the difference between Pinterest and other social networks is why people use it,” Kevin Roose explains, “— to plan for the future, rather than exhuming the past or analyzing the present.” On Pinterest, health-and-recovery-minded users, like your patients, plan for the future by pinning wellness tips, healthy recipes, and inspirational quotes. “Pinning says ‘I want this.’ It’s aspirational.”

Your physical therapy practice can be a hub for such holistic aspirations. Of course you’ll have boards dedicated to PT-specific topics (i.e. Knee Pain, Spine Rehab, Shoulder Problems, etc.) and other subjects that would be a perfect fit for Pinterest‘s “Health & Fitness” category, but you should also tap into the most popular categories like “Food & Drink.” For example, you could pin anti-inflammatory foods, therapeutic teas, protein-rich smoothies, and so on. Latch on to another popular category, “Women’s Fashion,” by pinning workout gear that your active or working-to-become active clients would be interested in. Think beyond the walls of your practice and consider the entire lifestyle of a person on the road to wellness. The topic“Physical Therapy” has 1.78 thousand followers; start showing a few of them why your PT brand is worth following.

Blog

Don’t freak out just yet—you don’t need to write a novel or post every day to have a quality blog for your practice. You also don’t need to be a tech wiz. With platforms like WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr (the second fastest growing social network over the past year), it takes minutes to set up a blog and begin participating in one of the biggest trends in marketing: content marketing. Content marketing is an approach which focuses on creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract and engage with an audience. Blog posts are an excellent vehicle for such content, whose keyword-rich format can also help your business by improving your search engine optimization.

Okay, enough jargon. Think about what your client base would find compelling, informative, and shareable. You could write a 300-word piece about five ways to improve shoulder mobility. You could invite a guest blogger (i.e. a patient) to share how PT has changed her life. You could ask your chef neighbor to type up her favorite smoothie recipe and share a few tips on healthy eating. Compile a list of your top ten favorite outdoor activities in your city. Host a giveaway, like a free resistance band, for a randomly selected commenter. Are your own ideas flowing yet?

Facebook & Twitter

You have a Facebook Page, right? Maybe a Twitter profile, too (if not, we can set these up for you)? These platforms are easy to get started on and are an effective way to build and engage with your online community. Like with other digital tools, it comes down to sharing high-quality, relevant content and interacting with your audience in a meaningful, authentic way. Since Facebook and Twitter are typically more well-known than the other channels we’ve mentioned, we won’t go too in-depth on the mechanics, but do know that having an active presence on these sites is becoming more of an expectation than a bonus for businesses. If a patient is in a work meeting and has a quick question (“Is the office cancelled today because of the snow?”), they’re probably going to pop on over to your (hopefully existent and active) Facebook Page or Twitter profile for real-time, up-to-date info. Trying to build up a collection of testimonials? Encouraging people to review you on Facebook is a great way to do so. You can then take these positive reviews and highlight them on your other channels, perhaps after turning the quotes into mini works of art with some free, easy design programs (i.e. Canva).

Practice patience

Be patient with yourself as you experiment with what works for your audience. You may be surprised by what resonates (or doesn’t), and just as your practice was built brick by brick, it will take time to develop your online community. Trust that the new growth you’re cultivating online will circle back to a more enriching experience at your clinic, for you and your clients.

How We Can Help

[note_box]E-rehab.com publishes regular, fresh, and engaging content for its members. From videos to memes, we provide a variety of content to compliment your social media marketing strategy. Contact us us to learn more about how we can help you with your social media marketing.[/note_box]

Stop the Lead Generation Madness

Each day I speak with a client or prospect that wants to generate more business from the web. They are overwhelmed, confused, have been burned and simply don’t know what to do.

It’s not surprising when you consider all of the possible forms of advertising communication as diagrammed here in The Conversation Prism:

Your head really starts to spin when you think of social media:

By Brian Solis and JESS3 (https://www.theconversationprism.com/) [CC BY 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons

Here are E-rehab’s Physical Therapy Online Marketing Recommendations

1. Make sure you have a great website – it’s one of the most trusted forms of advertising according to Nielson.

2. Make sure you have a mobile optimized website. 30% plus of your physical therapy website viewers are going to visit you on a smartphone.

3. Send out an email newsletter (examples here). It is the cheapest, fastest, and easiest way to welcome, communicate, and stay in touch with past patients.

4. Ratings and Reviews – online reviews are the second most trusted and actionable form of advertising according to Nielson.

5. Create videos about your practice, your expertise, about patient reviews, and patient testimonials. Here are examples of reputation videos at Terrapin Physical Therapy’s YouTube channel.

6. Use Facebook and Twitter to communicate social signals to the search engines and to demonstrate your expertise and credibility.

7. Create a blog and optimize the posts to rank for common conditions you treat like MBF Rehab has done.

Invest in the Hub & Spokes

[info_box]You can spend hours every week chasing after the latest tech that might generate new patients. Our advice is to stop the madness and create a solid online marketing platform that includes the seven components above. We call it the Hub & Spoke Model. Your website is your hub of online marketing and the other components are the spokes. Invest in these and you will build your brand and develop more business from community members that have a need for PT.[/info_box]