Like any type of marketing, medical marketing is a challenge. Obviously it is localized, but it is also focused on getting patients instead of getting customers. As such, it needs to be approached with that in mind. Physical therapy marketing specifically requires a delicate approach, as physical therapy practices tend to be small and locally owned. This means that any mistake that you make when marketing your physical therapy practice will become amplified, and can quickly spell doom for your practice. With that in mind, here’s what you need to avoid doing when creating a marketing strategy for your physical therapy business.
Don’t Ignore Your Competition
Most areas, particularly smaller towns and counties, are only in need of a handful of physical therapy practices to serve the local population. As such, it is very important that you don’t ignore the competition when creating your physical therapy marketing strategy. To do so, you should realistically assess what they do better than you, and how your physical therapy services differ from theirs. In doing so, you’ll be able to find what areas you need to improve in, and what areas you can exploit. When creating your marketing strategy for your physical therapy practice, keep these points in mind and make sure that you highlight your strengths and play up the weaknesses of your competition.
Don’t Replace Your Website with Social Media
Social media marketing certainly has its benefits – but it’s no replacement for direct traffic to your website. While you should, of course, invest in Facebook ads and beef out your social media pages, you don’t want to ignore your actual website. Social media isn’t actually all that effective for medical practices, particularly for physical therapy practices. As such, you’ll want to optimize for your online visibility and invest in local SEO.
As physical therapy practices tend to be localized, this is a great strategy that can help with online discoverability and won’t require you to invest constant money into social media ads. To do this, you’ll want to hire a professional SEO to help you optimize your website for local search. This can include submitting your website to local medical directories, as well as creating a Google business listing page. You’ll also want to make sure that your site architecture supports local SEO efforts.
Overall, there are many mistakes that can be made when marketing a physical therapy practice. These are just some examples of missteps you could make. However, even if you have made these mistakes, that doesn’t mean that there is no time to turn things around. Make sure that your physical therapy marketing efforts are holistic and localized in mind, and you’ll have no trouble attracting new patients. Ultimately, you need to differentiate yourself from the competition and focus on local search to make a real impact. If you do so, you’ll find that your physical therapy practice will take off like never before, and you’ll be able to soon be able to become the dominant practice in your area.
