Pulse Check: Making Sense of Doctor Marketing

Navigating the referral relationships between your practice and local doctors can sometimes feel like a scene out of House of Cards. Providers change offices, hire new patient care coordinators, create alliances with hospital groups…how can you even keep up? It is about prioritizing your efforts, a marketing triage if you will, and keeping your eyes on the bottom line.

Start by categorizing doctors into a few simple groups:

• Good: stable and comfortable


• Fair: stable but with pain points or fluctuating conditions


• Serious: unstable with questionable conditions/concerns


• Critical: unstable and in dire need of attention

Once sorted into their respective groups, you will have a good sense of the 10,000 foot view of your referral relationships. Which group has the most providers? The least? Why? Ideally, you would want to have the most providers in categorized as Good and the least providers in Critical condition.

Now you can treat each group holistically and determining what marketing programs are best suited to the individual providers. Here are some easy ideas:

• Good: These are the doctors who are consistently referring to you. You have a great relationship with them and their offices/staff. Referral numbers are staying the same month to month and patients return to the doctor happy with their PT’s results.
  
  
  
  • Treatment: routine marketing
    
    
    
    • Make sure all providers are included on monthly mailings, announcements, and external office communications or PR.
    
    
    • Schedule quarterly visits to the office or meet ups with the doctor to keep the relationship growing.
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  


• Fair: These practitioners are consistently referring, but you are sensing changes in the relationship.
  
  
  
  • Treatment: routine marketing with R&D (research and development)
    
    
    
    • Why is the relationship changing? New partner in the office? Staffing changes? Patient complaints? Hospital alliance?
    
    
    • Ask yourself (and your staff) these questions first. Be honest with yourself too- if you know that the new referral coordinator isn’t a fan of your office then you need to mend that bridge. Or if a patient complained because they didn’t get better right away then maybe you need a 1:1 with the doctor to figure out why.
    
    
    • Set up a visit to the office and make it clear who you want to speak with. Be prepared—you might have a tough conversation with a staff member today, but tomorrow you will be glad you worked out your differences. Or, you might want to bring your patient’s chart to show the doctor why they struggled to recover and how you can work together to get results.
    
    
    • Schedule monthly follow up visits to ensure the relationship is mending and closely monitor the number of referrals.
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  


• Serious and/or Critical: These providers are decreasing in referrals or have stopped referring altogether.
  
  
  
  • Treatment: prioritize and take action as soon as possible
    
    
    
    • Ideally, this is relatively small list of providers categorized as Serious or Critical. Analyze each doctor individually (especially if there are multiple providers in one office).
      
      
      
      • What is the degree of severity? Are you losing 1-2 referrals per week or 15-25 per month?
      
      
      • What has changed at the office in question? Did they align with a hospital group? Was a new partner or staff member added?
      
      
      • If there a no known changes at the office, what has changed at your clinic? Are you so swamped that doctors’ office visits have fallen off the radar? Did you hire a new staff member and were they properly trained on referral communications?
      
      
      
      
    
    
    • Prioritize the list. Tackle each situation effectively and immediately.
      
      
      
      • External/provider changes: set up an off-site meeting with a provider who you are professionally or personally close with. A change of scene might help to open up the dialogue and get real answers.
      
      
      • Internal/clinic changes: solicit feedback from trusted staff members and analyze what marketing efforts have be targeted toward that office in the past couple months.
      
      
      
      
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

After triaging and treating your referral relationships, you will be able to determine what marketing programs will be most effective in communicating with local providers. Consistency is still key and will help to ensure that Good and Fair referrers keep sending patients to the clinic. Individualized attention will be needed for Severe/Critical referrers. But with concentrated efforts and actions, you can move many of these providers into the Fair/Good categories and start them on a monthly marketing plan too!

For more help with doctor marketing and navigating referrals relationships, give our practice experts a call at 1-800-594-7656.

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Digital Marketing 101: Start Using Social Media for PT Practices

Social media is quickly becoming one of the top online sources for search, content, and news. Think about going out to eat at a local restaurant…before social media, you would typically choose a restaurant based on a friend’s recommendation or by searching online and reviewing the restaurant’s website and menu. With social media’s rapid growth, the process of choosing a restaurant has evolved…now, you might see that a friend commented on Facebook about a great new place or you might search use an online review platform (such as Yelp, OpenTable, or Urbanspoon) to see what other people are saying about the restaurant.

The exponential growth of digital and social media has opened opportunities for both businesses and consumers to engage in real-time, interactive communications online. With these opportunities also come potential risks and repercussions—disgruntled patients can leave negative reviews or competitors can create false accounts to “attack” other local businesses. How can you be proactive and smart in using social media for your business?

• Create or update accounts and/or pages for your business on all major social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn). Make sure to include all practice information:
  
  
  
  • Business name (and clinic location if applicable)
  
  
  • Logo / profile picture and appropriate cover/banner photos
  
  
  • Address, phone number, and website
  
  
  • Operating hours: these can be general or specific. If you have multiple locations, start with listing the widest operational hour range, knowing that patients could be seen at another location if they need early or late appointments
  
  
  
  


• Customize your URL: changing the page URL to be, for example, http://ift.tt/1B8hgDa will help to brand your practice on mailings and marketing promotions
  
  
  
  • See how: Facebook URLs
  
  
  
  


• Schedule regular social communications: posting 2-3 times per week is a good rule of thumb and will help to generate traffic to your social media without being too spamming or aggressive in your marketing.
  
  
  
  • Post types: use a mix of text only, text and images, video, and links to see what works best for your followers
  
  
  • Content: make sure to include 1-2 educational elements on how PT can help your patients feel free. Other content options include:
    
    
    
    • Seasonal or holiday posts
    
    
    • Updates on office specials and promotions
    
    
    • Links to other sources (such as the APTA or Move Forward PT) for informational content
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Execution: with your busy schedule, it may be hard to post regularly and at ideal hours (during the day, weeknights etc.) Consider delegating this task to your VP of Marketing/PR or to a reliable admin. You can also look into free platforms such as HootSuite that allow you to schedule posts in advance and have settings to send posts to multiple platforms and profiles and at specific times of the day.
  
  
  
  


• Communication best practices: social media is about generating engagement and online dialogues. However, not everyone uses proper etiquette or a positive tone when commenting online. It is important that you take both proactive and reactive measures to mitigate online risks, especially those on social media.
  
  
  
  • Be proactive
    
    
    
    • Make sure to create or claim your business on review-based social media, such as Google, Yelp, and HealthGrades. Update your contact info to ensure accuracy.
    
    
    • Monitor these sites bi-weekly or monthly. Make sure that the reviews posted (both positive and negative) are factual. Look out for scammers or people posing as former patients, but who have never been treated at your office.
    
    
    • If you want to build your online reviews, ask satisfied patients to post one. You could even offer a random drawing or giveaway for those who do.
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Be reactive
    
    
    
    • Report any offensive or fake reviews to the website. Be sure to note if foul language or HIPPA related patient details are included in the messages. The website should take action and remove the review for you.
    
    
    • Respond to your reviews. Positive reviews may not always need a response, but you can thank Jane Doe for her review and let her know that you are thrilled by her results (for example). Negative reviews should also be researched and responded to. See what information you can find about the reviewer and then check his/her file. Look for complaints, poor results, or personal conflicts with staff, admin, or billing.
      
      
      
      • If the patient did have a bad experience, such as long wait times or billing issues, thank them for the review and let them know that you would be happy to discuss the matter offline either over the phone or in person. Clearly state that you are aware of the problems and are addressing them internally.
      
      
      • If the patient does not appear to have a bad experience or the details look exaggerated, still thank them for the review. You need to be the “good guy” in this situation. Say that you would like to speak privately about the matter and to update their file with the missing information.
      
      
      
      
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

Overall, social media can be a great (free) digital marketing tool. You can use social media to brand your practice, engage with patients, and educate the community. You can also proactive protect your practice’s digital identity and can mitigate risk by addressing negative customer reviews. Want more tips on using social media for physical therapy? Check out social media for PTs

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How to Start Marketing to Patients

When it comes to marketing to patients, many practice owners struggle to determine where to begin or feel hesitant because past attempts have not yielded good results. A key component to any marketing program, but especially to patient marketing is consistency. Ad hoc or sporadic efforts will not generate reliable results. Think about this—offering a free consultation in April, a giveaway in July, and an online coupon in November may feel like your patients are getting a lot of perks for free and that is plenty of reasons to come back to the clinic. However, your patients may forget to call in April for the free consultation and then going back to PT falls off their radar. By the time they are notified about the July giveaway or stumble across the online coupon, the patient has probably already started an OTC pain regime or has decided that they don’t have time for PT.

A successful patient marketing program starts with both short term and long term planning. Before you market to patients, it is important to make sure that you are set up for success. Here are some easy ways to plan for the short term:

• Clean up your patient contact list
  
  
  
  • Remove any duplicates and consolidate multiple lists into one master spreadsheet
  
  
  • Make sure that the contact info is complete- name, street address, city, state, and zip are essential for mailing campaigns
  
  
  
  


• Look at the numbers
  
  
  
  • An established practice may have upwards of 5,000+ past patients on a list that was started 15+ years ago. Or, a new practice may only have 500 past patients.
  
  
  • Take some time to think about your patient lists and make sure that you are marketing to the best possible audience.
  
  
  
  


• Prepare the budget
  
  
  
  • Remember, it is all about consistency. So you will need to budget enough to cover several months of marketing to start.
  
  
  
  

Now that you have flexed your right brain, let’s have fun flexing your left side too!

Long term planning includes facts and figures, but is more about getting creative with your marketing (while remaining realistic about what you can accomplish). Here are some programs that can help increase the number of patient visits to your practice:

• Newsletters
  
  
  
  • Practice newsletters offer a lot of “real-estate” for you to educate and marketing to your patients. By incorporating informative articles based on common physical pains and treatments with testimonials and practice news, patients are able to understand the benefits of PT and will be prompted to come back in for your services.
  
  
  • Want to learn more? Check out our newsletters or view a digital sample of our newsletter.
  
  
  
  

• Postcards
  
  
  
  • Postcards are a great way to supplement your newsletters. They can provide targeted callouts to specific services such as back pain, neck pain, or sports injuries. Postcards can also be used to inform patients of new services offered at the practice such as massage therapy, dry needling, or personal training.
  
  
  • Postcards can be a first step in your patient marketing plan. Learn more about our postcards.
  
  
  
  

As you start thinking about marketing to your patients, remember that consistency is key to getting more patients to visit your practice. For more information, contact us today!

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