Is $895 per month a good investment for guaranteed* double-digit growth in your PT practice?
Answer: Yes, read on. No, Click away.
How We Help Physical Therapy Businesses Grow…
The PT Referral Machine (PTRM) is absolutely, the most complete and affordable marketing resource available for PT businesses, big and small. If you are good at what you do, PTRM sets you on a path for double-digit growth in as little as 60 days – guaranteed.*
You need effective marketing, plain and simple. What you don’t need is more “how to” advice from consultants who charge thousands for seminars, workshops, and other traditional agency services. Consultants and seminars can look appealing because you want to learn how to be a better marketer and try and handle the job yourself. But for most PT practices handling the marketing in-house is usually a really bad idea. It’s just too expensive to hire a trained marketing professional, and then they need to outsource most of what you need anyway. Is finding an Industry Solution a better idea? We think so…
So stop banging your head against the wall. There is no need to waste your time struggling with marketing anymore…
Get Your Complete Physical Therapy Marketing Department – A Senior Executive With Support Staff And A Proven Track Record For Results For As Little As $895 A Month.
Services Include: See all this and more on a 60 minute Strategy Session.
• Strategic Planning
• Custom Website
• Search Engine Optimization
• New Patient Email and appointment confirmations
• Blog
• Internet and social media
• Patient information materials
• Physician materials
• Event promotion and materials (seminars, workshops, in-services, open houses, grand openings)
• Receptionist training and scripting
• Direct mail programs
• Results tracking
• Agency services
- Graphic design
- Copy writing
- Media analysis, purchasing, and discounted printing services
*Before ordering your service, sales targets will be set. When we proceed with implementation and you do not meet the agreed sales projections, we will credit or refund 60 days of service.
What Is PT Referral Machine?
PT Referral Machine is a complete resource for planning and executing Fortune 500-Style health care marketing systems on a small business budget.
See our programs and pricing here.
Looking for a complete turnkey marketing solution for your website or other special ailment treatment program? Call David directly at 774-255-1125 to learn more and discuss your unique requirements.
Have general questions about our PT marketing industry solution?
Visit our FAQ page.
Sincerely,
Website strategy first – then design
Simple Principles Help Make Your Physical Therapy and Health Care Website The Hub Of A Patient-Generating Marketing System, Not Just An Online Business Card
Website and internet management decisions grow more and more important for physical therapy and health care practitioners every day. Gone are the days when a provider could get by with a cheap $39 a month website, a picture or two, contact information, and an About Us page. Instead, websites have become the hub for strategic “want or need to know” information about your marketplace that drives consumer choice and influences referral patterns.
Yet while the push to the internet accelerates, we still see large numbers of providers struggle, postpone, and bungle even the most basic website decisions. Why? Perhaps the simple answer is confusion over what to expect from the website and how to sort out all the choices. Once you know what to expect, you can place a value on the site based on the potential impact on your business. With a sense of value in mind the job of sorting out your options should be straightforward.
What To Expect From Your Website –
From The Marketplace To The Backend
In The Marketplace
Think of your website in the marketplace in two categories: Services and Referral Generation.
Services
Your website should provide services that improve the customer experience and ease of doing business. Don’t narrow your thinking about functionality to just “branding” or displaying basic service and contact information. Obviously, the low cost, high speed, large informational-transactional capacity, and extensive reach of the internet make it ideal for virtually all a practitioner’s business functions with the exception of delivering physical goods and services.
As the use of most computing and internet technologies continue to converge on mobile devices, the delivery of all “soft” products and services will converge as well. Patient intake forms, scheduling, appointment reminders, and online payments through mobile devices are all simple examples. Start with the simple basics like online appointment forms, and get your business services online now, don’t wait.
Referral Generation
Referral generation flows from great content. Great content is a traffic generator: Search engines are smart enough to find and rank it, and visitors are engaged enough to stick on your site rather than bounce around exploring other search results.
Great content facilitates the visitor’s decision making process by providing information about diagnosis and treatment options, and then helping them understand how to choose the best provider. Each visitor wants the best care available, not the second best, and usually has no idea how to find it or even what to ask. Good strategic content avoids self-serving platitudes like “most experience” and “caring about you.” Instead, it provides checklists, reports, and other offers for more information that educates the visitor to a point where they draw the conclusion you are the best choice. And, if they can “click here” to chat now, register for an event, refer a friend, request a complimentary consultation, or request an appointment – just the basics, but that’s a GOOD start for an engaging site.
The Back End
Planning & Design
Ninety-nine out of one-hundred people reading this article should not expect (or even attempt) to build, maintain, host, or manage their internet presence themselves. Despite the TV commercials promoting “click-click” and you are done, this is a really bad idea. Most likely, the site will not meet your needs, and you will pull your hair out trying to keep up with the call to maintain it, or worse yet, not be able to publish it without many important pages missing, “under construction,” or just looking awful. Yes, great website building tools exist, but you still need extensive training, expertise, and LOTS of time to work with them.
That being said, even though you shouldn’t be producing your site, you do need to understand enough about the platform choices so you know what to expect for support, development, and maintenance. Avoid proprietary technologies where the website can’t be purchased and moved should you need to do so. To protect your investment, choose a widely supported open source platform with a large community of independent developers who can step in at any time.
Strategic Content
Understand that there is a big difference between the website design and the CONTENT. The most common mistake you can make is to go for a website designer who also masquerades as a content provider. Anyone can post a welcome message, pictures, and other basic information, but the battle is won with good strategic content (yes, this is a competitive battle). A pretty design will not overcome the internet demand and the visitor’s appetite for relevant content.
Don’t be intimidated: Many small practice managers look at what their larger competitors are doing on the web and draw the conclusion they can’t afford to compete. If that’s you, here’s the good news – most of the online applications you will need are readily available and affordable. If you can’t afford or don’t want to lay out the cash to purchase a system, consider licensing with an option to buy. Make sure you partner with a strategic web content provider who not only has a track record for generating and qualifying patient leads in your field, but also integrates the concepts into your offline materials as well.
David and Trent can be reached through their website PTreferralMachine.com, on their blog PTRMblog.com, or at either of their offices in the US or Canada. US – 90 Altons Lane, East Falmouth, MA 02536, 774-255-1125. Canada – 26 Sienna Bay SW, Calgary, AB T3H 2C8, 403-510-7051. Email info@PTreferralMachine.com
You probably hear advice from marketing people like us about how “blogging” will help you get found on the internet, and we always hear from most physical therapy and dental clients that blogging is just another chore with a limited impact on the business.
So, realistically, what should you expect from your blog? We thought a real example might help provide a fresh perspective.
We want to share an example that comes from a physiotherapy business we work with in Halifax, Nova Scotia, One to One Wellness.*
The owner takes full advantage of the blogging feature on his clinic website by collaborating with key staff members, all taking turns writing posts. With eight contributors, each person only has to write a post once every two months. Over time (about two years now), the blog has increased traffic to the site by gaining authority with key search engines. It even attracted enough attention to be quoted in a national magazine, Canadian Living. And, while doing research, another reporter from Progress Magazine found a relevant post from the blog and was impressed enough to feature their clinic in a wellness article. Not long after that, they received another inquiry from blogging expert Linda Dessau, asking to use their blog as an example of team collaboration. As far as customers go, their website and blog was recently voted Silver for “Best of Halifax.” The publicity continues to be a boon to their brand.
This did not happen after one or two posts. It was the result of good leadership, patience, and the basic discipline of routine over two years. The reward is strategic advantage. The simple process of blogging has created a team activity, boosted moral, and provided the foundation for good strategic content-driven marketing. A commitment to the discipline of blogging will pay dividends to all healthcare providers who embrace it and feed it with worthy content.
In preparing to write this post, I asked Nick (owner of One to One) a question:
Q: As the CEO, what benefits (so far) in the organization have you seen from your approach to blogging? What costs? Were any of the benefits/costs anticipated?
A: There have not really been any costs associated, except the cost that we pay you to support our marketing and develop our site. And I guess the opportunity cost of our time; however, it seems to be something most enjoy.
I think everyone has a writer in them. Most of us just need a deadline to actually get us to put something down in writing. There have been several benefits of us blogging as a team, including:
- simply doing something as a team – everyone participates
- giving everyone a voice and a way to speak to prospects and clients
- extending conversations; ie. allowing people to hear what we have to say without us being there to say it
- fresh content on our website that could increase engagement
- ability for people to check us out ahead of time and understand our offering more fully – several have read our posts to validate a recommendation before booking an appointment
- more far-reaching connections, such as a journalist who contacted us for her magazine article and a blogging advisor who wanted to more about team blogging
- multiple perspectives expressed
- ability to share our own content through other channels, such as Facebook or Twitter
- possibly improvement on search engine rankings*******
Why A Good Blog Can Be As Important As A Business Plan For Many Small Businesses
A conventional business plan has value for two main reasons; first, it demands disciplined input from the management team in order to complete, and second, the plan lays out key aspects of the venture so that others can understand and evaluate it using common business language.
A business plan reflects the nature and character of the management. It also describes the value proposition for the product and service. It is the quality of the plan, the content (along with a track record), that attracts investors, employees, and other strategic partners to support the business.
But what about attracting customers, the lifeblood of business? Attracting customers is no different, but instead of calling the result of the disciplined internal process a “business plan,” we call it “marketing.” As consumers of everything from A-Z, we all use the information we collect from advertising and the internet about a business to make buying decisions. Assuming an attractive value proposition, the business with the best system for communicating this value will dominate the marketplace. Businesses that deliver superior value will die or never reach their potential if they can’t get the word out while their mediocre competition thrives on the strength of superior marketing.
Every Business, No Matter How Big Or Small, Can Market Effectively With The Right Content, And Blogging Provides A Disciplined Process For Building Foundational Content – FOR FREE (almost).
Learn More – Related Article: Enter Content Management – The New Frontier In Practice Management
*Thank you to Nick and Lori Matheson, Jen Sheppard, and the entire team at One To One Wellness for permission to share their blogging success story. Visit their blog at www.121wellnessblog.ca
Thinking About Printing A New PT Practice Brochure or Updating Your Website?
Take This 5 Minute Evaluation And Avoid The 4 Most Common Goofs That Discourage Response
Practice brochures and websites are essential, but how do you avoid investing in concepts that won’t do the job? You want something that gets read and separates you from your competition. The biggest mistake you can make is to assume that a graphically pleasing piece of eye-candy decorated with your logo and a menu board of services with self-serving platitudes will get the job done – it won’t. Only your printer and web/graphic designer will be well served by that type of expensive commercial art.
So here are a few tips and evaluations to help you get the results you deserve from your next printed brochure or website update:
|
Goof |
Tip |
Evaluation |
| Goof#1: Platitudinous Cover or Homepage Headline or No Headline |
Use a problem-solving headline on your cover or homepage Avoid making your focus cute phrases, taglines, or your logo by itself (you are not Coca Cola). You can still have beautiful graphics, but don’t forget an engaging headline. |
Interrupt Format When you look at the cover or homepage, does it provide the promise of helpful educational information inside, or does the reader quickly draw the conclusion that it is just another puff piece? Typically, just pictures, logos, and taglines SCREAM “puff piece.” |
| Goof #2: Wrong copy points |
Organize your information by “what readers want to know,” not by what you want to tell them. Your readers’ interest is in learning quickly (in a Cliff Note fashion) why they should trust you to provide the best care when it comes to diagnosis and treatment. This means explaining your process and how it compares to some industry standard of care. Avoid making the focus of your content a menu board of services or the “I am so glad I found you” testimonial. |
Need to Know Information When you scan the brochure or website, does it quickly guide the reader through diagnosis and treatment? Can the scanner become a reader and stop on a topic to learn more? |
| Goof #3: Offers missing, hard to find, or not as appealing as they could be. |
Provide clear offers for more educational information and encourage some form of free consultation. Your hours, website, physical address, and your phone number are critical pieces of information, but you should do more. Consider offering free educational resources like seminars and free consultations. Give these offers a “marketing handle” with features and benefits to make them stand out as something of special value. For example, you could appeal to joint replacement candidates with a handle like “30 Minute Pre-Surgical Readiness Assessment.” |
Offer Strategy Other than providing contact information, do you have appealing offers of value that can be easily identified without reading through the text in the brochure or going on a random clicking spree on the website? |
| Goof #4: Format Driven, Not Content Driven | Determine the size and format of the brochure based on content. Determine website layout, graphics, and navigation based on the content.Avoid selecting the format or website platform before you complete the content. First, determine what to say and how to say it. Only then should you select the size and length of the brochure. (Hint – if you are producing a tri-fold pocket brochure from a single 8-1/2” x 11” sheet, chances are the content will miss key strategic elements). | Is Content King? Did you select the size and page layout before completing the content? Did you contact an agency or designer who asked you what format limitations you had before discussing your content needs? Did the agency or designer ask you to direct the copy points? An experienced PT marketer will already know how to provide good strategic content after learning about what you do. |
(If the tips and evaluations below make sense to you, we invite you to take advantage of a Complimentary PT Brochure & Website Power Level Evaluation and submit your materials for review at http://ptreferralmachine.com/free_resources).
Thank you for reading, David C. Steinberg
Is Your Web Strategy Relevant?
For independent practitioners, the debate about the importance of websites and the internet revolves around the following questions: “Why do I need a site? Will people actually choose me because of my website, and if so, how will they find it?” But from a marketing standpoint, where the question is more what kind of content to post on your site rather than whether to have one at all, we still hear many people question the value of a website. Many practitioners say that their businesses are built on word of mouth, and that their clientele do not use the internet to get information about physical therapy services. These practitioners maintain a website out of a reluctant sense of obligation while many other more web-enthusiastic practitioners still ponder the question of website relevance.
This is the most basic and critical factor of website relevance – it is also the most misunderstood. Today, in addition to investigating diagnosis and treatment options, healthcare consumers use the internet to find “phone book” information like how to contact you. People looking for contact information are ready to buy. Since we’re talking about the internet, a search engine driven medium, it is highly likely that a searcher may sift through other web pages while looking for yours. It’s also likely that a competitor’s website with more relevant content will influence buying decisions; your competitor may jump ahead of you in the search engines and push you aside. Make it a practice to check your competitor’s websites regularly. Ask yourself, from your clientele’s perspective, how does your website serve the visitor’s needs better than your competitor’s? Is your site “sticky” enough to keep the visitor from wanting to click away and explore other similar sites?
Relevance Factor 2: The Standard Bearer Effect
Healthcare decisions are usually emotionally intense. Because of this intensity, consumers and physicians are motivated to put effort into making the best decision possible. The problem with making the best decision possible with physical therapy is that people (generally speaking) don’t know why one physical therapist may be different from another, or even what questions to ask when choosing, so they need your help in getting this information – it is part and parcel of your expert knowledge. If the content of your site helps your visitor understand how to compare one provider to another on a qualitative basis*, then, assuming you are good at what you do, you become the Standard Bearer, and prospects choose you first. This is an extremely important strategic opportunity. The internet is the primary battle ground for this type of information. Word of mouth is not an efficient or accurate way to deliver Standard Bearer information. As a business owner, you can think of it this way: The old way of finding a provider by asking a friend or physician who to choose is no longer the end of the search process – it’s just the beginning. Most people will use the internet to learn more about you, and, during the process, learn more about other options they may want to consider. Even elderly patients who don’t use the internet are often assisted by people who do, like family and friends.
Internet content can be deployed anywhere. This may sound “duh” obvious, but most healthcare businesses treat the internet as a back-room transactional tool, not a business-building communication tool. Internet access is on your desk, in your waiting room, and in almost everyone else’s homes. Your website can provide value added services that your competitor’s don’t. When done properly, simple things like patient intake forms, scheduling, and compliance programs can increase patient satisfaction and your bottom line at the same time. For example, most people would rather get the paper work started at their home computer rather than wrestle with a clipboard upon arrival (yes, even computer-phobic Medicare patients can get assistance with this from family and friends).
www.PTreferralMachine.com Articles, December 10, 2008.
www.PTreferralMachine.com Articles, June 16, 2008.
www.PTreferralMachine.com Articles, June 17, 2008.
| How Much Should You Budget for Marketing? |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
It always amazes me when I read or hear about other marketing experts who advise clients to budget marketing based on a straight percentage of projected sales, like 5% – it’s a lazy answer used by poorly trained marketers who can’t (or don’t want to) calculate return on investment (ROI) for the programs they deliver. Sure, you have to start somewhere, and a basic percent of sales is a sensible starting point, but that’s ONLY the beginning of the conversation, and to leave it at that is to leave out the most important part.
Your marketing budget should provide you with the ultimate leverage for growing your business. What we mean by leverage is that increase in sales achieved for every dollar invested (yes, you should be able to measure this, and any “expert” advising you on how to spend your marketing dollars that can’t set you up to do this isn’t worth a dime of your precious cash). For example, if you have a specific treatment option like McKenzie that you advertise in the paper at a cost of $1,500, and it produces three new patients AND one new referral relationship, what’s the ROI on that? If the average course of treatment is $850, and the new referral relationship is worth $30,000 annually, then that single ad provided quite a bit of leverage for your business:
If running that ad again meant that you would need to go over the “5%” of revenue recommended by the lazy consultant, would you do it? Assuming you could handle the new business, OF COURSE. To pull this off, here are three steps to follow:
So, if you currently budget based on a straight percent of revenue, it may be time to reassess your strategy – the results can be extremely satisfying. For more information on Fortune 500-style marketing on a small business budget, please visit www.PTreferralMachine.com. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||