A courageous PT who just opened a his own Fee-for-Service Physical Therapy Practice recently asked me: “What source of marketing do you find brings in the most local new clients for you other than word of mouth (ie adwords, facebook, local news, etc.)?”
I’d like to say up front that my answer is simply based on my own experience with my cash physical therapy practice in Austin, and what works in other cities or types of practices may vary greatly.
Which marketing efforts are working?
Aside from word of mouth, my biggest sources of new patients are:
- Personal Trainer referrals
- People I met via networking efforts
- Internet (Google search, Review Sites like Yelp.com and Google Places, and Facebook).
Personal Trainer referrals
See this blog and video series at my clinical website to get an idea of how I market to personal trainers.
Networking
See this 2-part series on networking for ideas of how to be successful in this arena.
Internet
As for review sites, I have developed a love-hate relationship with Yelp.com due to its “Filtering Mechanism.” At the time of this writing, I have 18 reviews but only 2 of them are showing! I’ve contacted Yelp a few times about the issue but they always reply with a generic, unhelpful response. Back when over 50% of my reviews were showing, I was getting at least 1-2 new patients a month from Yelp.com. The pay-per-click ads they offer are quite expensive, so I haven’t tried them yet… but I may experiment with them in the future.
Google Places is certainly growing in popularity, and due to the issues with Yelp mentioned above, I am starting to encourage patients to post reviews there (or in both places, if they’re willing). The problem is that so many people go directly to Yelp when they are looking for a local service (rather than doing a Google search first), so I don’t want to steer people away from using it either.
As most of you know from my other posts, I actively use Facebook as a way to keep myself fresh in people’s minds and I have streamlined the process such that it takes very little of my time to consistently utilize it. For details on how, see: Hootsuite and Google Alerts posts. My Facebook page also performs pretty well in the search engines for certain keywords and phrases. For those reasons, it is worth my time to maintain the use of Facebook but I must admit it does not create loads of patients by any means
The question above also mentions “Adwords.” I have not used Google Adwords yet (pay-per-click advertisements), but I plan to soon. I will create blog posts and website pages with video that will act as landing pages for the Pay-Per-Click Ads. I’ll then target people in the central Texas area searching for information on specific types of injuries/pain. As I go through this process, I’ll be recording the whole thing with screen-capture video and teach the step-by-step process to anyone who is interested, so keep an eye out for that in the future.
Media exposure
If you can get on the local news, do it! I haven’t tried to figure that one out yet, but I expect I will at some point. What I have done is submit articles to local relevant publications. This has been a nice form of free marketing, though I must admit again that it hasn’t produced a ton of patients. The reason I say it is “nice” is that all it took me was a little time, and it has produced a few patients … so far. Even if you don’t immediately see new patients after such articles are published, you are still building your brand awareness, which can pay off far into the future.
So far, I’ve only paid for an advertisement once since starting my practice … it was a quarter page ad in an Austin fitness magazine and it was very well priced ($300). It produced one patient so far, who ended up seeing me ten times and spending $1,200. So the ad obviously paid for itself many times over, and that patient may send referrals in the future or come back with new injuries himself. However, if the ad did not create that one patient, it would have been a bust.
I’m certainly still in the process of figuring out the answer to this question, and seeing what types of marketing/advertising deserve my time and money. One thing I have seen time and again is that creating personal relationships by getting out in the community and networking has been far more productive than things like advertisements, articles, and Facebook that reach many but really touch few.
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Your last sentence is the crux of the whole marketing issue in a cash based practice, and I like the way you said it – some methods of marketing reach many but touch few. We need to have laser-like focus on the 1-2% of the population in our geographical area who are perfect for what we offer. All of the rest of the marketing to a broad segment of the population is time consuming and expensive, with little result for the efforts!
Yes, and I’d like to say here that although the percentage of any city’s population that would be willing to do self-pay PT is likely small, it doesn’t mean the total number of people is not enough to support a number of our types of practices. Austin has at least a 6 very busy private-pay PTs that I know of.
Hey Jarod,
Another great post, I like how inspiring you always are for people doing things differently. Have you ever worked with a local Regional Business Development Center or Small Business Development Center? I’m not sure what sort of presence they have in Austin, but I’ve had great success with them in Iowa. In a past life of mine, they were able to help me secure funding and start a natural foods store at 21 years old with nothing but an idea and 3/4 of a college education 🙂 More specific to this topic though, the one I work with in Iowa has classes and will work with you to do market research. They have access to databases that are cost-prohibitive to subscribe to for the majority of people, but can provide you excellent information and ideas to reach a specific market. For example, you could generate a list of people in a particular geographic region that subscribe to golf magazines. It’s actually sort of scary to see just how much information is available about you – income, political affiliation, religious preferences, etc all just sitting in databases. Email me if you would like more information or to talk more about ideas.
Hi Lewis, thanks so much for bringing this up! Yes, Austin does have the types of Business Development groups you’ve mentioned. I’ve never worked with them myself but this suggestion may lead others to do so and could make a huge difference in their business. Thanks again!