All businesses, including physical therapy, have to have an effective marketing strategy. Nitin Chhoda reveals a few techniques on effective physical therapy marketing that will help your practice succeed.
Physical therapy marketing has changed dramatically over the past decade. Nobody looks at the yellow pages anymore, and people move so frequently that relying on word-of-mouth is less and less practical.
Instead, everyone is finding the information they need online, using online word-of-mouth tools like social networks and consumer review websites.
Health care providers such as physical therapists, have to market themselves too, and they have to have effective physical therapy marketing even to their current patients.
Knowing the Physical Therapy Marketing Niche
The first step toward effective physical therapy marketing is to understand the market that you are trying to appeal to. Most people don’t want to have to go to the doctor, or to the hospital, or to a physical therapist.
When they do go, they are apprehensive, and not just because they are concerned that something may be wrong. They are also always worried about what it will cost them to find out if they need more healthcare.
One way to attract patient using modern physical therapy marketing is to present a modern and confident sense of health care and great physical therapy marketing. Of course, having a comprehensive, integrated EMR in place will put you in the position to demonstrate modernity and efficiency.
But beyond that, you will want to let you patients know that they can trust you to deal effectively with their insurance companies.
Because so many patients don’t even know what is covered by their insurance plan, they are even more anxious about the billing process. One way to help patients is to talk frankly and openly with them about what they can expect.
Insurance Plan Coverage
Finding out just what the insurance plan does cover before the patient comes in for an appointment is not always easy, but it does give you an incredible physical therapy marketing message.
What if you could tell patients that you will work with their insurance company even before they walk through the doors, so they know what they’ll pay even before they accept any health care services?
Patients are a difficult market to target with a convincing and inoffensive physical therapy marketing ideas and strategy.
You don’t want to infer that they aren’t getting the care they need or that they have been doing things wrong. But you do want to offer them something they haven’t been getting: convenience and transparency when it comes to paying bills.
Establishing Relationships
Physical therapy marketing doesn’t have to be focused solely on commercials and advertisements. You should also establish relationships with the complementary practices that may be able to send you referrals.
You want the confidence of anyone who can send you a referral, because referrals are one of the most consistent forms of marketing you can get. Patients are much more likely to go to you because someone they know and trust sent them.
And physical therapy marketing doesn’t stop when the patient makes an appointment. You’ll continue to share your marketing messages with your patients during and after each visit.
This may mean improving as you go and taking feedback, but the end result will be a practice that actually caters to the needs of patients and ensures that when they do need health care, they will come to your practice.
