Marketing a Physical Therapy Practice

It is usual to find the owner of a practice not at all trained in the area of marketing. I am told “marketing efforts don’t work.” Tracing this down it can be found that the efforts and actions themselves violated the principles of marketing, and of course the conclusion would then be “they didn’t work”.

Many folks don’t understand that there’s a step prior to marketing which is the subject of Public Relations. This brings forth another area of “no training”, but when not done in this order, you’ll surely have troubles with your marketing.

A very good Public Relations textbook is called “Effective Public Relations” by Scott M. Cutlip and Allen H. Center.

Now, some may have an adverse reaction due to it being a textbook, however, let’s look at some of the easy things you can do:

3^rd Party Endorsements are mentioned as one of the best PR tools you could ever have. Written testimonials regarding results obtained in the words of the patient. (You need their approval in writing to use it but I have found that most patients would love to sing the praises of their therapist!) Post these on your website, send them out electronically to your patient base, send copies to your referral sources, (only to those that you have a relationship with as without that it may be considered junk mail), and display them professionally in your waiting room or throughout the halls of your practice.

Another great PR tool is the patient video interview – the “before and after”. It’s a visual world, therefore these are valuable! These would also be on your website and possibly also playing in the reception area.

I have worked with private practices in all 50 states and Canada now for the past 26 years. I know what works and what doesn’t and wish to give the above information to you so you can get the good word out about the wonderful work you do!