99 Marketing Ideas
Take a look at our video library!
By Michelle Collie, PT, DPT, MS
Need a marketing idea? Look no further than the library of video vignettes designed to inspire the marketing minds of those in physical therapy practices.
Viewers can seize this unique opportunity to listen to real physical therapists share their best marketing practices with the industry. Here’s a sample of the ideas, featured on the Private Practice Section (PPS) website under practice management, marketing resources.
1. Start a blog.
Blogging can play a key role in marketing your business and strengthening your online presence. Keep your blogs consistent and focus your content on your target audience. For example, if you want to see more elderly patients and manage fall risk, write a series of blogs on this subject matter. Include images and videos for further appeal. A blog can provide information to your readers on injury prevention, treatment, and basic education on the body, in addition to patient stories and news about your practice. Share your blog on your social media platforms, website, and in patient newsletters. Keeping up a dependable and educational blog system will help ensure your audience knows that you are an expert in your field.
2. Survey your referral sources.
Send short surveys to your top referring physicians to learn more about their practice and to strengthen your relationship. A multiple-choice questionnaire can include questions such as, Are you taking new patients? and What is your preferred method of communication? Keep it friendly by providing a small gift card and asking them to have a virtual cup of coffee. Keep it personal by handwriting the envelope and including a stamped and addressed return envelope inside. By making it easy for them to complete the survey and return, you will receive valuable feedback and stay at the referral sources’ top of mind.
3. The team approach.
Foster the team approach to patient care by accompanying patients to their physicians’ follow-up visits. Simply ask your patient if you could come to their follow-up appointment to ensure there is optimal communication with their physician with regard to their care. This provides the opportunity for the physician to truly understand what you do. It also centers the relationships around the patients and gives you an opportunity to connect with the referring physician by engaging in a high-level clinical conversation, creating a level of trust with the physician as well as the patient.
4. Create marketing teams.
Imagine if you could create a culture of mini-marketers! By forming a marketing team within your practice, or within each of your clinics, you can help broaden your range of connections to referring providers. Hold monthly workshops to give clinicians the opportunity to learn how to promote themselves effectively and learn from each other about great ways to get past common barriers, build confidence in their marketing abilities, and learn to understand the different aspects of the marketing cycle. Add in some role playing in the workshops, and clinicians will have to break out of their comfort zones. Ultimately clinicians will see the value in building these relationships, not just in potential of new patients but also the communication they have when discussing patient care.
5. Hold a lunch and learn with referring providers.
A lunch and learn can be a wonderful opportunity to create an atmosphere where providers can learn valuable information. Review basic exercises for acute low back pain, teach posture principles that the providers will find helpful even for themselves. Lunch and learns also provide the chance for those in niche practices—for example, pelvic health, vestibular, and pediatrics—a chance to connect with specialist providers and have higher level clinical conversations that allow the knowledge and value of physical therapy to be understood. Be sure to measure the effectiveness of the time and money spent on activities such as this, by tracking the number of new patients referred.
6. Partner up.
Look for opportunities to connect and partner with local businesses. These connections can be made through patients or at networking events with organizations such as your local chamber of commerce. Be a resource providing education on injury prevention, workplace safety, ergonomics, exercise, and more. With an established and trusted relationship at a business, your organization will become the organization that manages work-related injuries as well as non–work-related issues for the employee’s entire family.
7. Care to share.
Create an area in your clinic for photos to celebrate the success stories of patients seen in your practice. This small but meaningful gesture builds a culture of appreciating achievement and strengthens patient loyalty and word-of-mouth referrals. Patients love spotting photos of friends and family members on your wall, which further strengthens the community.
8. Host a 5K.
It takes a lot of work to organize an event such as a 5K; however, the branding, social media presence, and relationships developed are all valuable benefits to hosting such an event. In addition, the opportunity exists to generate revenue and allocate funds to a beneficiary, strengthening community relationships.
For more ideas, go to https://ppsapta.org and visit the marketing resources under practice management.
Michelle Collie, PT, DPT, MS, is the chair of the PPS PR and Marketing Committee and chief executive officer of Performance Physical Therapy in Rhode Island. She can be reached at mcollie@performanceptri.com.