Marketing a physical therapy practice is a little different from promoting other types of businesses. You’re dealing with people’s health, which means you need to build a special level of trust before they book a visit. Plus, you have lead sources—like referring MDs—that other businesses don’t need to worry about.
That’s why we put together this special physical therapy marketing guide. It’s filled with the tips, strategies, and examples you need to generate a steady flow of leads who turn into happy patients.
Contents
- How to create a physical therapy marketing plan
- 11 physical therapy marketing strategies
- Create a lead-generation website
- Focus on local SEO
- Claim and complete your online directory listings
- Grow a following on social media
- Nurture leads with email marketing
- Run Google Ads wisely
- Get and use customer reviews
- Attend local events
- Build a referral program
- Co-market with complementary businesses
- Get more physician referrals
How to create a physical therapy marketing plan
Marketing takes effort. A good marketing plan makes sure that effort returns the best benefit for your unique physical therapy practice. So, before you jump into marketing tactics, go through each of these four steps to get your plan in place.
Outline your marketing goals
You may have heard of the SMART framework for goal setting. It’s a fantastic tool to solidify your marketing objectives.
Here’s how the framework applies to setting goals for marketing a physical therapy business.
- Specific: Go one level deeper than “I want to get more patients” here. Set specific goals like expanding into a new geography, adding new MDs to your referral list, or gaining new patients from a particular demographic (like veterans or athletes).
- Measurable: Set a metric for each goal. For example, you may say, “I want to double the number of patients I get from [zip code].”
- Attainable: Make sure your goals are within reach. Is it feasible to grow your billable hours by 500% next month? If not, scale it back so you can achieve what you set out to do.
- Relevant: Ask, “Why does this particular goal matter?” For example, getting referrals from existing patients is important not just because it’s more leads, but because those referrals can lead to your best new patients.
- Time-bound: Set a target date for each goal. If you want to double the number of local athletes you serve, plan to do it within the next six or twelve months.
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Identify your target audience
Much of your marketing plan will depend on who you want to engage. Where are the best places online and offline to connect with them? What types of messaging will resonate? What ad targeting characteristics should you use? All of these answers dictate the rest of your plan.
Your marketing content, channels, and goals should all align with your target audience.
So, how can you identify your target audience?
Start by thinking about who your patients are now. Consider their age, location, hobbies, employment, and how they learned about your practice.
Then, focus on who’s missing from the mix. Assess the gaps between your current patient roster and your goals. Do you simply need more customers like the ones you have? Or is there a new demographic you need to focus on?
As you dig into the details, read through this list of 12 questions you can ask to dial in your target audience. They’ll help you refine the description of your target customer.
Choose your marketing channels and tactics
There are dozens of marketing channels you can use to market your physical therapy practice. It’s normal to feel a little paralysis by analysis when choosing which to use.
This is where your goals, target audience, and marketing budget come in.
Let’s say your goal is to quickly increase brand awareness for middle-income millennials who like to run, for example. Paid ads and organic posts on Instagram could be a great play. Millennials make up a big part of Instagram’s audience, and you can do a lot of ad targeting there. Plus, there are tactics to get your non-paid posts in front of a big audience (like using hashtags and influencers).
Once you know who you’re marketing to, figure out which marketing channel will most likely reach them.
Your marketing budget then dictates how much you spend on ads and how much you work to build a following through unpaid posts. Ads work faster, but helpful content shared organically can build a big and trusting audience over time.
Get to know your target audience and choose the best marketing channels to meet them.
Create a marketing calendar
Creating a marketing calendar is a critical step in making sure you don’t veer off track. Here are a few tips to help you create it:
- Note any important holidays and events you want to promote (like World Physical Therapy Day!).
- Assign a portion of your budget to each month so it stretches throughout the year.
- Fill in content ideas for the following month for emails, social media, blog posts, etc.
- Review the previous month and note what worked and what didn’t
It’ll take a minute to get your calendar up and running, but it’ll become second nature after a couple of months.
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11 physical therapy marketing strategies
With a solid plan in place, it’s time to dig into the fun stuff. Let’s review 11 physical therapy marketing strategies you can use to build your practice.
1. Create a lead-generation website
Having a solid website is table stakes if you want to engage new patients online. But what we’re talking about here is a website specifically designed to generate leads.
A lead generation website has features to help turn visitors into connections you can nurture into patients. To turn your website into a lead-generating machine:
- Use popups and lead-capture forms to collect visitor contact details.
- Include strong calls to action (CTAs) that motivate action.
- Make sure your contact information is presented prominently.
- Show off some happy client reviews and other social proof.
- Consider adding a chatbot that answers basic questions and schedules appointments.
Your lead-generation website should have high-visibility buttons and clear calls to action for important steps like finding a location and booking an appointment.
2. Focus on local SEO
Search engines are still one of the most important marketing channels for businesses of all types. That’s doubly true for local service businesses since millions of people go to Google in search of their next auto mechanic, house painter, or physical therapist.
Have a look at this search result for “physical therapist in Topeka.”
Those top three spots, called the local 3-pack, are some of the most valuable real estate on the results page.
Want to nab one of those prominent positions? Review this local SEO checklist. It has everything you need to rank highly for the keywords people use to find physical therapists in your town.
3. Claim and complete your online directory listings
One of the most costly mistakes a local service provider can make is to leave their online business directory listings incomplete or with incorrect information.
When someone goes looking for a physical therapist on Google or Yelp, they’ll skip over any listings that don’t have phone numbers or website links. Even worse, if your hours of operation are incorrect, you could end up annoying the people you wanted to work with.
The good news is that it’s easy to claim and update your directory listings. And in most cases, it’s also free to do so. The key is to fill in all available information, including photos and reviews. The more detail you can give, the better the chance a prospective client will choose you. Here are several ways you can optimize your Google Business Profile to get you started.
Don’t forget to add some photos of your staff and office to your directory listings.
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4. Grow a following on social media
As a physical therapist, you have valuable knowledge social media users would love to learn. Use that advantage to market your practice by sharing educational posts.
The beauty of this marketing tactic is that you don’t need to be an expert cinematographer. Just set up a light and your smartphone, then talk about different ways your followers can get and stay healthy.
TikTok is growing in popularity with both physical therapists and the patients who need them.
Once you have the basics down, play around with different social media platforms, run giveaways, and encourage user-generated content.
5. Nurture leads with email marketing
Email marketing may feel old school, but it’s your best bet for nurturing new leads and prior patients so they book more appointments.
What’s so great about email as a marketing channel is that you have a lot of control over the content and the delivery. For example, you can segment your email subscribers based on the services they use and send personalized, relevant emails they’ll be happy to open and read.
By segmenting your audience, you can nurture your subscribers with more relevant content.
6. Run Google Ads wisely
Using paid search ads is a sure-fire way to find new patients fast. That’s because your ad will show up above all of those unpaid results when someone searches for a physical therapist in your town.
Plus, Google Ads appear on Google Maps, so you get a lot of coverage for your investment.
Now, running Google Ad campaigns can feel a little intimidating. And for sure, it’s possible to waste money on them if you’re not careful. This guide will get you started. And these Google Ads tips will help you get the best return on your marketing dollars.
7. Get and use customer reviews
You’ve built a practice that delights your patients and fixes their pain. Ask them to share their stellar experience in a review and splash it around so more people know how fantastic you are.
It may feel a little a little weird to request public feedback at first (most of us don’t go around fishing for compliments). But there are ways to ask for reviews that aren’t so awkward. You can add a review link on your website, ask for reviews in a follow-up text after an appointment, or even have your front desk staff hand out review cards.
Once the reviews start rolling in, make sure you use them on your website, in social media posts, and in your promotional content. And whenever possible, take a second to respond to reviews (yes, even the negative ones). That’ll help quickly build trust with anyone researching your practice.
8. Attend local events
This is where physical therapists can really shine! Even in moderately sized towns, there are dozens of weekly and yearly events you can attend, offer advice, and collect new leads.
Try searching Google for nearby running groups. Reach out to the organizers and offer to stop by to give a free gait assessment.
Any weekly sports or activity club is a great option to drum up physical therapy patients.
Check out other events like health fairs, holiday festivals, and races (5Ks, bike races, etc.). Once you’re there, register people to win a free session or get a free assessment.
9. Build a referral program
One of the best ways to get more great patients is to ask your favorite patients to refer their friends and family members. You’ll stand a lot better chance of getting those referrals if you start a customer referral program.
Offer incentives to encourage more client referrals.
There are a few steps involved in creating a referral program. To get it going:
- Pick a referral incentive like a discount or free session.
- Make it easy for patients to give referrals (like adding a referral link to your website).
- Promote your program in emails, on social media, and directly with patients.
10. Co-market with complementary businesses
People who work out at local gyms and buy healthy smoothies might be the same people who need your sports-focused physical therapy services. Look for mutually beneficial ways to co-market with these complementary businesses to help each other get new leads.
To get started, go back to your marketing plan and review your target audience. Then, think about what other local services that cohort of potential patients is likely to use. Connect with those providers and offer to refer patients, tag each other in social media posts, and even share space at local events.
Local gyms are excellent marketing partners for your physical therapy practice.
11. Get more physician referrals
Physician referrals have long been an important source of new patients for physical therapists. But the old methods of garnering those referrals—often free lunches and muffin baskets—don’t cut it anymore.
You’ll need to be a little more strategic to become the preferred PT for an MD. Here are a few ways to do it:
- Choose doctors who have a patient mix that matches your target client.
- Connect with health providers on LinkedIn.
- Create resources—like an exercise list—that physicians can hand out to their patients for certain diagnoses.
- Use old-school relationship-building at local conferences and networking events.
The main goal is to be helpful before asking for patient referrals. Then, it’ll be a natural part of the conversation.
Make physical therapy marketing fun
Whether you’re a full-time marketer, an office manager tasked with marketing, or a physical therapist who wears all the hats, you can make marketing a fun part of the job. Pick the channels and tactics from this list that appeal the most.
Give several marketing tactics a try and see which you like best and which delivers the best results. When you’d like a little expert help scaling those results, contact us. We’ll show you how we’ve helped other PTs grow their practice with less effort.
