Marketing for Physical Therapy

The first thing to understand about marketing for physical therapy, as it is true for any marketing, is the purpose of marketing. Because society has confused the subjects of Marketing, Sales, Promotion and Public Relations, sometimes one ends up not knowing what one is trying to achieve.

The result you should be getting from marketing is reaches from people who are interested in your services. Whether they qualify for it, they have an insurance you take or not, they can pay for it or not, that is not the concern of marketing. So, if you are making the phone ring, the door bell ring, the mail person work harder bringing you reply cards, your Marketing Hat is on. Beyond that, you have the Front Desk to skillfully turn that reach into a new patient.

Now, marketing is more challenging if no public relations work has been done. The result you are trying to get is a favorable working environment for your practice. This does not necessarily result in the ringing of the phones, but it simply results in when people perceive the need for your services, that is whom they would call. This is why you should do public relations as well as marketing for things to work smoothly.

You must agree that some actions you do are in the realm of both: while they are likely to make people think well of you, they might instigate them to call you if they have a perceived need for your services. An example of that would be doing a free seminar in your community. This will obviously make the attendees think well of you, but if you also work out a way to reach you if they have need, they will likely call afterwards.

So, actions like the one in the example are the more likely to get you better results, as they are doing both, PR and marketing.