Marketing and Public Relations Committee Report

By Michelle Collie, PT, DPT, MS

What an honor it is to chair a committee that is given the opportunity to provide our members with tools, resources, support, and educational material to help market, grow, and evolve our practices.

It is a committee of physical therapists and marketing experts with entrepreneurial mindsets that are dedicated to helping our profession in their marketing and public relations needs within their communities. I do hope that every member will take the time to explore the resources available to promote their practices and the profession of physical therapy.

Why do patients come to our practices? An accurate answer to this question provides access to valuable data that can be used to measure the effectiveness and return-on-investment of our marketing initiatives. Therefore, over the course of two years, collaborating with many members and experts, we developed a categorization system to help practices gather useful data. This data that can be used to ultimately measure the effectiveness of marketing initiatives. If you missed our presentation at the Annual Conference, then check out the webinar by Scott Wick and me on the Learning Center titled “Marketing Benchmarking: Using Data to Maximize Profits.”

Check your email inbox and don’t dare delete the Monthly Toolkit! This resource consists of a professionally written blog post, a press release, and social media posts that members can edit, brand, and personalize to use within their markets. From themes that include movement screens, the annual physical, and preventing surgery, current and past toolkits are available under “marketing resources” in the practice management section at www.ppsapta.org. We love to hear stories from members of how they use the toolkit in their practices. Darren Rodia (darrenr@kineticptpa.com) does a stellar job overseeing the monthly toolkit and welcomes member ideas and feedback. Do you know your Fit Factor (www.fitfactorsurvey.org)? Our recently updated, interactive survey allows people to benchmark where their physical health is. In addition, the tool increases consumer awareness of what physical therapists do and drives people to local private practices. We are excited to announce that Fit Factor can now be branded to your practice! Members can add their own logo, embed it into their website or on social media, and collect and review analytics. Join Steve Albanese and Peter DeCoteau for a Fit Factor webinar on June 3 to learn how to use this tool to attract new patients, reengage with past patients, and as an educational tool.

Need some inspiration? Our library of marketing ideas now showcases over 50 vignettes from private practice physical therapists. Jenna Kantor led the filming at the 2019 Annual Conference, ensuring the 99 Marketing Idea resource continues to evolve and provide ideas for your marketing endeavors.

By now our members know that @myphystherapist is the social media handle that provides easy access to consumer-ready posts. Jan Scorpian oversees a task force that has developed three patient personas and with these, blogs and supporting social media images. Of course, all these resources are available for members to download and use straight from the PPS website.

Free for members, Marketing 101 is a staple for physical therapists who want to understand and learn more about marketing. This series of five videos produced by gurus Lynn Steffes and Scott Wick is available through the PPS Learning Center.

Thank you to our committee: Scott Wick, Darren Rodia, Jenna Kantor, Steve Albanese, and Jan Scorpian, and we welcome our newest member Peter DeCoteau. In addition, we appreciate the support and help from our board liaison Ali Schoos, as well as all of the staff at PPS.

Finally, please utilize the private practice website (www.ppsapta.org) to find all of the mentioned resources and more! Read our monthly column in Impact magazine, listen to our webinars, follow and share content @myphystherapist, post the blog from the monthly toolkit, distribute the Fit Factor survey, and watch your practice grow!

Michelle Collie, PT, DPT, MS, is the chair of the PPS PR and Marketing Committee, President of the RI chapter of the APTA and Chief Executive Officer of Performance Physical Therapy in Rhode Island. She can be reached at mcollie@performanceptri.com.