Digital Marketing 101: SEO for Physical Therapy Websites

When it comes to your practice’s website, there is a lot more to consider beyond the design and features. Think about your site as a classic car—flawless body work, a flashy paint job, and custom interior look fantastic, but if the engine doesn’t work well then you can’t fully experience the ride. Websites are very similar—a trendy design and professional photos can give the appearance of a great site, but if the content, function, and SEO aren’t top-notch then the site will not generate stellar results.

Now comes the challenging part- how do you know what to “behind the screen” to make your website a rock star? Check out this infographic from HubSpot and here are some keys components to focus on:

• Content: all the page assets (headlines, copy, images, links, forms etc.) that make up a webpage within the site.
• Keywords: the single most important word or phrase that describes the webpage, its content, and its purpose.
• Page Title: the title that will appear when users search for your webpage in a search engine.
• Meta Description: a 156 character description of your webpage that appears below the page title in a search engine query.
• Page URL: the webpage address that appears in the URL bar at the top of your browser.
• Mobile Optimization: a responsive website that is designed to perform seamlessly between desktop and mobile use.

There is more going on behind the screen that you might think! To be truly successful across all components, we recommend investing in a professional web design and development company (click here) AND in a high-quality CMS (Content Management System) such as WordPress that allows you to integrate various plugins for even better performance. Here are some tips to get you started:

• Content
  • Choose a direct, specific headline
  • Make sure to include your page keyword in the headline
  • Include at least 500 words of copy on each page
  • Use subheadlines to break up the copy
  • Include links to other pages within your website to drive additional traffic
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• SEO Components: we searched for “back pain riverton wy” and see the image below from Google for an example of the search results.

• Keyword: “back pain” is included in the page title, URL, and meta description. The slight bolding of the words back and pain indicate that the keyword is present.
• Page Title: includes the keyword, name of the practice, and geographic location. These are called long tail titles and help with location specific searches.
• URL: the URL is the page domain (tetontherapypc.com) plus the services section and specific condition/treatment
• Meta Description: the meta should always include the practice name, keywords, and a descriptive sentence. Try to promote how your physical therapy services can relieve a pain, reduce injury, or restore movement.

Mobile Optimization is fast becoming one of the most important components of your practice’s website. Google bases its SEO algorithm (the technical calculation that contributes to your webpage’s ranking in search engine results) partly on the mobile optimization of the site. For more info read: http://ift.tt/1EDhxEx. How do you know if you website is mobile optimized?

When you view your website on a smartphone- what do you see? Is it just a smaller scale version of how your site looks on a desktop? Or does the site’s design tailor specifically to a mobile view? Your ideal scene for your website should be one design that tailors to mobile AND responsively scales up to a desktop view. Huh?

Navigating the mobile and responsive web design world can be a challenge even for an experienced web developer. That is why we recommend that you always consider a professional when redesigning or rebuilding your website. An industry pro will know the tools, functional capabilities, and tricks of the trade to get your site up to par. A web developer should also be able to consult on content and SEO to ensure you get the maximum results from your website. Want to learn more about how a high-quality, expertly executed website can bring in big results for your practice? Call us today: 1-800-594-7656

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Marketing for Success: Real Results for Our Clients

When it comes to your clinic, you need to make informed decisions that help your business flourish and prosper. You probably wouldn’t ask a PT to do your accounting or have the facilities staff coordinate patient referrals. A PT is specialized in physical therapy just like an accountant specializes in taxes and financial management. By having the most well educated and trained team members handling their specific roles, you can see maximize results with minimal errors.

At Practice Promotions, we are more than a promotional marketing company. Our clients are our MVPs and receive high-quality, concierge level business support that goes beyond our products. Our expert account managers and executive team are on-call to help our clients analyze their marketing results, troubleshooting issues, and brainstorm new, creative ideas.

Take a look at one of our long-term clients, Loudoun Sports Therapy Center, who has been with Practice Promotions since 2012. Mike and Dee Bills, owners of Loudoun Sports Therapy Center, started with our Practice Newsletter System as a tool to promote their physical therapy services and treatments to patients and doctors. Monthly direct mailings of a newsletter (see a sample from February 2015) and physician mailer helped Mike and Dee DOUBLE the volume of their practice in just one year!

Watch their success story here…

Loudoun Sports Therapy Center’s print campaign was such as success that they wanted to expand their marketing to included postcards, prescription pads, rack cards, and new patient packets.

See a sample physician mailer
See a sample postcard

Mike and Dee also asked our team to help them rebuild their website and to enhance their digital marketing presence. After the new http://ift.tt/1GaMqya launched, the practice started to see new patients contact them for appointments directly through the website. The expert SEO (search engine optimization) also helped Loudoun Sports Therapy Center rise to the top of Google search rankings.

As is the case with any business, things are not always smooth sailing. Changes to patient volumes, referral relationships, local competitors, and even office staffing have challenged Mike and Dee to be flexible and resilient. For example, before working with Practice Promotions, they were working with a different company to rebuild their website. A revolving door of difficulties ensued—unclear communication, unforeseen expenses, and drawn out timelines—leaving Mike and Dee with a less than ideal website. Once they decided to bring our digital team onboard, we got to work rebuilding their site and expanding the content and functionality beyond that of a basic web design service. Daily communication on the design, page copy, imagery, patient forms etc. kept Mike and Dee in the loop and produced a beautiful, high-quality website that can grow to accommodate their future practice needs.

Beyond their print and digital marketing, Loudoun Sports Therapy Center has seen tremendous success because they had the support of our full service team. From daily communication with their account manager to one on one support from our VPA, we have helped Mike and Dee navigate performance metrics, staffing changes, and a competitive PT market in the DC metropolitan area. Our team helps to track their results, provides training on best practices, counsels them on effective management, and consults on their practice’s business growth and goals.

That is the Practice Promotions difference- we are invested in the holistic success of your business beyond what you can achieve from our expert marketing. With our team on board, you can strive for results and we will help you succeed.

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Get More Doctor Referrals for PT

Securing referrals and sustaining those relationships with medical practitioners and providers can feel like a roller-coaster teenage romance. One week, you are seeing lots of referrals and having excellent interactions with the office’s staff (ie. the honeymoon stage). The next week, the office staff won’t return your calls and referrals have dropped off entirely (ie. the first fight). By the end of the month, you are back in the provider’s “good graces” and seeing referrals climb up back (ie. the make-up). But why does this happen? What can you do to weather the storm and see smooth sailing on the referral front?

Here are 4 easy ways to nurture and grow your doctor referrals:

1. Promote your skills and accomplishments

As a practice owner, you probably are a licensed physical therapist and may have additional certifications, such as a MTC or FAAOMPT. Your staff might also have specializations in massage therapy, pediatrics, occupational therapy, or other key treatments. Are you marketing these qualifications and areas of expertise to local medical practitioners? You can:

• Feature a staff member in each month’s newsletter. Ask them to explain their certification or specialty and relate those skills to how they can help patients feel better.
• Announce new accomplishments in the newsletter, during office visits, and online. If you hire a new staff member with a specific skill or have someone complete additional certifications or training, make sure you tell your referring partners. “Did you know Jane just received her occupational therapy certification? If you have any patients needing OT, please send them our way.”

2. Market key health conditions or treatments

Over 80% of patients suffer from pain associated with their back or neck. And that pain often impacts other areas of the body or mobility functions. Saying that you treat back pain covers most of those conditions, but calling out specific diagnoses, symptoms, or syndromes that you treat can help a doctor’s office see you as a specialist AND a generalist.

• Write a newsletter or blog article on a specific condition that you see in a number of patients. Maybe you provide post-surgical rehab, and see a lot of knee replacements. For example, our client, Teton Therapy, provides occupational therapy for oil field workers and is one of the few local clinics to do so.
• Network with action and support groups to build PR in the community. See if you can demo exercises at a local assisted living facility and be sure to network with the on/off site doctors to build referrals. Or speak at a conference on orthopedic surgery to showcase your rehab to local surgeons and doctors.

3. Be persistent

It is easy to get discouraged when you have reached out to the same office several times and are still not seeing referrals. Consistency is key in your doctor marketing. You can send 10 mailers and not see one referral. But, maybe the next mailer will focus on a specific condition, such as arthritis or shoulder pain, and that provider will feel a response to the marketing and start sending you patients.

• Refresh your marketing by adding in new topics to appeal to a wide range of providers. Do some competitor research on what other clinics are promoting and see how you can stand out.
• Don’t stop communicating even if you haven’t seen a single referral. Think of your doctor marketing as a sledgehammer and the door to the perfect referral relationship as a dam. You need to keep swinging the hammer to chip away at the dam, but once you break through—a flood of referrals will come.

4. Dedicate resources

As the practice owner, it can become too much to try and run the clinic, see patients, and operate a successful referral marketing program. You need to be dedicating resources: time, money, personnel, and creativity to keep building relationships with doctors.

• Get a marketing guru and have him or her manage the doctor marketing and report back to you with the results. This might be a role that your current Referral Coordinator or VP of Marketing can take on as he/she should be routinely engaging with both the office staff and provider at referring practices.
• Turn to the experts who have years of business acumen and marketing expertise to help manage your doctor marketing. These marketers can provide a fresh perspective on what you are currently doing and how you can explore new options. At Practice Promotions, most of our account managers are former PT office staff and can help you by objectively analyzing and pinpointing areas to strengthen your marketing to sustain consistent referrals.

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Digital Marketing 101: Professional Photos for Physical Therapy Marketing

“A picture is worth a thousand words” per the age-old saying—this is especially true for your digital marketing. When promoting your PT practice online, the branding (logo, images, and photos) that you use to depict your clinic are often the first time a potential patient is “seeing” your business. What type of first impressions are online viewers developing?

Let’s look at ABC Physical Therapy. The clinic has an OK website—it’s not the latest and greatest, but it works well, provides relevant information, and is performing well in SEO or search engine optimization. ABC PT’s logo is prominent in the header and footer and corresponds to the site’s overall design colors and scheme. When the user starts to look beyond the homepage though, things take a downward turn. There is a large image that relates to the treatment described at the top of each service page, but the photos are self-photographed and look “grainy” or pixelated. Since the clinic has fluorescent lights, the people in the pictures look blue/orange and have a lot of shadows on their faces. When the user looks at clinic photos, the equipment looks washed out and has flash marks in the reflections. The staff photos look more like mug shots than professional headshots. Ultimately, the user keeps ABC PT on their list of potential clinics, but keeps researching to see if other clinics look more promising.

What could ABC PT have done to make the “hard sell” and get a new patient through their website and online branding?

Let’s look at a Practice Promotions client, Loudoun Sports Therapy Center, who successfully redid their website using a great mix of stock photos and high-quality self-photographed images.

Stock Photos

• Good for: homepages and services pages
  1. Stock photos make the best use of staging, models, lighting etc. Practice owners can have a graphic designer hand select images that work well with the clinic’s patient demographics and PT treatments offered.
  2. Stock photos can still look “real”. Potential patients will respond to the service illustrated and, with the right mix of diversity and ages, can identify with the stock models.

Clinic Photos

• Best for: about us and staff pages
• Good for: facility pages or galleries, high specialized or specific treatments/equipment
  1. Clinic photos should be either professional and/or high-quality.
  2. Professionally styled, shot, and edited images are a timeless marketing asset for your clinic. A professional photographer can shoot staff photos in the studio or in the clinic and can stage and light your facility to highlight its features.
  3. High-quality photos can be taken by a staff member or friend who has some photography knowledge and a high-resolution camera, such as a DSLR. At Loudoun Sports Therapy Center, Dee Bills has a knack for photography and shot fantastic staff photos using a natural setting. Check them out on the staff page!

How to take your own high-quality photos

• Get a “photographer” who has a working knowledge of how to set and shoot portraits and who owns a high-resolution camera
• Plan for the shoot
  • Set a date for staff photos (and a rain date for outside shots). Schedule a time in the morning before PTs start seeing patients.
  • Style your “models”. Have the staff wear your PT clinic’s polo or other branded shirt. We don’t recommend t-shirts because they look wrinkled in photos. If you don’t have branded shirts, ask the team to wear solid colored tops with either collared shirts or modest necklines. Block the office calendars to allow everyone time for their photos and some extra time to do hair/make-up that morning.
  • Set the stage. A few days before the shoot, try out different test locations and lighting. Check out the test images on a computer to see the coloring and styling. Some recommendations:
    • On overcast days, outside settings can work well. Find a bench near your office that has a nice tree or plantings in the background.
    • If you have to be inside, find a room with lots of natural light (even try turning off the fluorescents) and a clean, solid colored wall.
  • Lights, Camera, Action
    • Start taking the staff photos. Don’t hesitate to have the team member adjust their clothes or hair to photograph better. Also shoot in a variety of poses to see what looks best.
    • Allow 10-15 minutes per staff member. The first few might take longer depending on how well you prepped, but once things are rolling the process should speed up.
  • Editing
    • Once the photos are taken, spend some time going through each frame and choosing the best one for each staff member.
    • If you want, you can use photo editing software (ie. Adobe PhotoShop or iPhoto) to improve the overall image quality. Or, if you are working with a marketing company, you may be able to have their professional art director or designer edit the images for you.

Whether you choose to use a professional photographer or DIY, high-quality photos of both your staff and clinic are an invaluable marketing asset especially for online marketing. Prospective patients and referrers often feel more confident about their healthcare decisions when they are able to see the staff and clinic that will be providing services. You also can use these images to enhance and revamp print marketing pieces and programs.

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Proactive v. Reactive Marketing and Why Your Practice Needs Both

As a practice owner, your days can easily become caught up with treating patients, managing staff, maintaining the clinic…all in addition to your busy personal life. Eventually, it becomes more about keeping the ship running than about keeping it on course.

Think back to your first few years out of college. Employers, parents, and friends would ask you where you saw yourself in a year, in five years, in ten years? You had those questions answered—in a year you wanted a better job, in five years you wanted to pay off your loans, and in ten years you wanted to own your own practice. Now, you have achieved those goals and probably set new ones. But have you set, achieved, and reset those goals for your clinic?

During our initial consult with clients, we typically ask them to describe their PT practice. Who are the key patient groups? What services or specialties do they provide? Where is it located? When was it started? Why are they seeking our marketing expertise? For many owners, these answers are easy—but are they accurate?

• Who are the key patient groups?
  
  
  
  • This information is critical in making educated decisions regarding your business plan and marketing programs. Knowing your target audience determines your marketing plan and what you do to achieve your business goals.
  
  
  • When your practice opened, you might have been seeing a blend of seniors and middle-aged patients seeking help with back, hip, and shoulder problems. Who are you treating now? Did you community demographics shift? Are you seeing more young professionals with sports injuries because new tech companies have moved to the area? Or are you seeing more women’s health cases because your PTs specialize in those treatments?
  
  
  • Action: look at the last week or month of appointments. See what trends in patient demographics and PT treatment types you can see.
  
  
  
  


• What services or specialties do you provide?
  
  
  
  • Do you have a PT on staff that specializes in whiplash and auto injury recovery? Have you expanded into providing occupational therapy? Do you offer therapeutic massage and dry needling?
  
  
  • Bigger question… are you proactively marketing these services and specialties? Your PT branding and marketing needs to be current and project where your practice is going. If you offer new treatments, make sure that they are listed online, in brochures, and hyped on social media.
  
  
  • Action: take a red pen and go over your current branded materials. Cross out services or insurance that you no longer offer and add in new features.
  
  
  
  


• Where is your clinic located?
  
  
  
  • When you opened 15 years ago, your clinic might have been located in a shopping center just outside town. Now, the town might have grown and you located along a main thoroughfare. Maybe you served primarily local residents, but the new office parks make more patients commuters.
  
  
  • Is your marketing reacting to these changes? Have you promoted that you are within walking distance of the new offices and take lunch-time appointments? Are you including enough diversity in your photos? Should you consider having signs in both Spanish and English?
  
  
  • Action: Take a drive or look at an online map of your area. See what is within walking distance, accessible via public transit, a 10 minutes drive. How can you both react to new developments and proactively market to those key populations?
  
  
  
  


• When was your practice started?
  
  
  
  • Most owners will say, “We’ve been in business for 12 years”. That’s great! Do you highlight that you have been “Serving the local community since 2003”? Being local is buzzing in mainstream marketing, make sure you are capitalizing on your success.
  
  
  • Have you continued to build new relationships for your practice? Are you being both proactive and reactive?
  
  
  • Proactive Action: Review last month’s referrals. Where are the patients coming from? Have you networked with the new providers? Are you maintaining relationships with the leading doctors’ offices? Take action!
  
  
  • Reactive Action: If you have been in business for 5, 10, 15, etc. years, add those achievements to your brand. Amending your logo with a line of text below about your years in business or adding a graphic banner/seal to celebrate an anniversary year can draw new eyes to your practice. You can even reach out to local news stations to see if they will run a story about your 10 year anniversary.
  
  
  
  

Both proactive and reactive marketing are essential to help support and achieve your PT business goals. In order to effectively brand and promote your practice, you need to continue to evaluate who are your patients, what treatments they need or want, where they are living/working, and why they are coming to your clinic. Tips to success…

Proactively market your PT practice’s services and specialties to the key patient audiences.

Reactively maintain and grow your brand and adjust your marketing’s text, imagery, and placement to respond to community changes and developments.

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Marketing Cash Based Physical Therapy Services

As the healthcare landscape continues to evolve, practice owners are looking beyond the boundaries of insurance-based programs and plans for payment. Have you considered offering cash payment plans for your services and treatments? How would accepting cash payments or switching to cash-only impact your practice marketing?

First, let’s start by saying that the decision to “go cash” is a BIG one! You will need to devote time and effort into analyzing you practice’s third-party payers, income, financial trends, and patient demographics. More information and guidance can be found on the APTA’s website with specific articles for APTA members. Take a read through these resources and consult with your business partners, colleagues, and advisors on your options. If you do decide to pursue cash based PT, here is how you can enhance and expand your marketing to see even greater results.

• Save the date
  
  
  
  • Accepting cash for physical therapy treatments is a big deal. Start building “buzz” about your new payment options by incorporating that messaging into existing marketing:
    
    
    
    • Add a callout “Accepting cash payment plans effective April 1, 2015” to your newsletter and physician mailer.
    
    
    • Update your website’s page on insurance and payment
    
    
    • Include a flyer in your new patient packets
    
    
    • Post on social media
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Send out invites
    
    
    
    • Do you have a list of past patients whose insurance is no longer accepted in office? Is there a provider group in town who has recently switched to cash or cash-only? Send out targeted marketing campaigns to these groups and work on establishing referrals relationships.
      
      
      
      • Knowing that cash based physical therapy services matters to a specific patient demographic is valuable data. These patients may only have access to services from a limited number of clinics.
      
      
      • It is important that you highlight the key differentiators (ie. That you gladly accept cash payment) to these audiences.
      
      
      
      
    
    
    • Track the RSVPs
      
      
      
      • Monitor the marketing you are sending out and the number of new patients or referrals specific to your cash based PT offerings. Are you seeing 2-3 more patients per month? 10-15? This information can help you make educated marketing and business decisions for the future.
        
        
        
        • Seeing a lot more new patients? You could do a larger community marketing piece, such as a postcard, that focuses on cash payments for PT. Emphasize that no referrals are needed and that you will coordinate payment plans on an individual basis.
        
        
        • Not seeing a huge lift in visits? Re-evaluate your marketing—see if you are communicating to the right groups. Remember, not every area or community has a high demand for cash services.
        
        
        
        
      
      
      • Follow up and say Thank You!
        
        
        
        • Happy, cash paying patients can provide testimonials that promote your treatment and business. Look for stories of patients who otherwise might not have seen results, such as those without insurance or whose insurance no longer covers PT.
          
          
          
          • Send Thank You notes to patients who gave testimonials or those who referred family and friends.
          
          
          • Personally (either in the office or through a hand-written note) thank the providers who specifically referred cash patients to you, thus building the referral relationship.
          
          
          
          
        
        
        
        
      
      
      
      
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

Marketing to the cash crowd can be a challenge. Each clinic will have different promotional needs based upon their patient demographics and the environment of local providers and doctors. Be sure to spend time researching your target groups and reviewing your business plan. Search online for informative articles, such as this post from Web PT, and talk with former classmates or colleagues about their experiences.

For more information about navigating the healthcare changes and how to keep your practice marketing on track—give us a call! We have helped clients successfully transition through the third-party payer battlefield and into the cash based PT marketplace. Our expert marketing programs can help you today!

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10 Creative Ways to Reactivate Past Patients

Past patients are critical to the success of your physical therapy practice. They are living proof of the fantastic results that can be achieved from your treatments and often are the leading source of recommendations for your services to doctors, family, and friends. But once the last appointment is complete, it can be hard to maintain genuine contact and communication with past patients. What can you do to keep engaging with and to reactivate past patients?

1. Do follow-up surveys: task the front desk with calling each discharged patient approximately 3-4 weeks after their last visit to check in. Use this opportunity to confirm contact information and to see how the patient is feeling.

+ Make sure the patient is added to all routine marketing mailing lists

2. Ask for a testimonial: either during the follow-up survey or another point of contact, ask the patient for a testimonial (especially if you were not able to get one at the last appointment).

+ Get the patient’s authorization for you to use the testimonial in office marketing projects

3. Hype the patient referral program : start hyping your patient referral program in your monthly newsletter. Offer an incentive (gift cards or coupons work great!) for patients to refer themselves or others to your practice.

+ Set deadlines and targets for X number of reactivations and include the deadlines in the newsletter marketing to encourage timely action

4. Send a postcard : a directive marketing campaign specifically referencing past patients can be a needed change up from your routine marketing messages. Be sure to call out past patients’ success with your clinic and highlight any specials or savings you are currently offering.

+ Include a physical challenge, such as Can you briskly walk for 10 minutes? as a “teaser” to test patients mobility and function.

5. Run a social media contest: think of fun (free!) contests that you can easily execute using social media. Have past patients Like or Share a post and be entered to win an incentive.

+ Have a lot of Twitter followers? Have past patients Re-Tweet (RT) your message for a chance to win.

6. Spotted! Do you give your patients t-shirts or hats? Schedule a day/time when office staff will be at a local gym or community center and have them look for past patients wearing your clinic’s tee. Those “spotted” patients can have their picture taken with their gift card or giveaway.

+ Use social media or an email campaign to spread the word about the Spotted giveaway.

7. Coordinate with community events: is the local 5K coming up? Offer a special pre-race training and conditioning appointment to past patients. Getting them back in the clinic before the race can prevent training injuries and improve performance.

+ Most races give out goodie bags during bib pick up. Coordinate with the race team to get your business cards and extra newsletter copies included in the bags.

8. Host an open gym night: Extend your clinic gym’s hours one night a month and offer exclusive access to past patients. Have PTs on hand to assist and answer questions.

+ Consider offering free childcare during the open gym to allow more parents to attend.

9. I Spy! Do you have a company car with your logo on it? Or can you decorate a vehicle with magnetic logos and flags for the day? Go all out and park the car at a local shopping center with lots of visibility. Ask social media followers to post or tweet pictures of the car to your clinic and give the followers a free screening coupon.

+ Make sure to get all needed approvals from the shopping center or parking authorities prior to the spying.

10. BINGO! Start a game with past patients. Ask them to choose a Bingo number (ie. N34) on the day of their last appointment. Make a large Bingo card poster for the waiting room. Each week, draw one number for the game. If a patient chose that number, call them for a check in and offer a free screening. If that number makes a Bingo, give that patient vouchers for 5 free screenings to share with friends.

+ This game can be an ongoing activity for the clinic, and you can have “Bingo weeks” when you draw daily winners or offer enhanced prizes.

Want more ways to reactivate your past PT patients? Our expert account managers will help you get creative with your practice marketing and get more patients back into the clinic. Give us a call today to start seeing results!

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Successful PT Marketing Results and ROI (Return On Investment)

As a practice owner, you have probably tried several different approaches to your PT marketing—phonebook ads, flyers, online specials….etc. Do you know which marketing campaign worked? How many patients or referrals did it generate? Are those results sustainable? These questions can help you gauge the success of your marketing efforts and the ROI or Return on Investment produced.

Let’s look at some general statistics:

• Net profit from 1 physical therapy appointment = $80-$100
  
  
  
  • Varies based on services/treatments performed and insurance reimbursement
  
  
  
  


• Average profit from 1 course of PT treatment = $90 (avg.) x 10 visits = $900

Therefore, one new patient equals approximately $900 in additional income to your practice.

Now let’s think about your practice marketing plan and budget. The key correlation is between money spent and ROI with the goal always being: Money Spent < ROI.

This might seem like a simple equation, but things can get complicated. Often, practice owners will under or over spend on marketing campaigns or placements that do not generate optimal results. For example, John owns ABC Physical Therapy and decides to spend $1,500 per month on a billboard located next to a local highway. In the first three months of having the billboard, John sees 6 new patients ($5400 in additional income) and thinks the billboard is working great. However, he is assuming that these patients are coming in from the billboard campaign and uses that rationale to justify the expense.

Take a closer look—John is still spending $1,500 per month on the billboard, but has trained his office staff to ask all new patients where they heard about ABC PT. Of the 6 new patients, 3 say that they heard about ABC PT from friends who received treatment there, 1 found the clinic online, and 2 came in after seeing the billboard. Therefore, John has spent $4,500 on the billboard and earned only $1,800 in income.

Money Spent = $4,500 > ROI = $1,800 = 40% ROI

See what happens when John utilizes a marketing campaign that is easy to track, quantifiable, and consistent…John decides to spend the same amount of money each month, $1,500, on a practice newsletter than can be mailed to both patients and doctors. He knows that the newsletter will be mailed to 1,000 people each month. John also has his office staff ask each new patient where they heard about ABC PT. Each month, John gets 10 new patients/referrals from the newsletter or a 1% response. Now that might seem like a small percentage, but:

Money Spent = $4,500 < ROI = $9,000 ($900 x 10 patients) = 150% ROI

As a practice owner, you cannot underestimate the importance of planning and tracking the budget and results from your marketing programs. If John had not been tracking his results, he might have been missing out on a 110% return on investment.

If you want help with planning, implementing, and tracking your marketing program and its results—we can help! The team at Practice Promotions will evaluate your marketing budget and will guide you in choosing a program that will deliver consistent results and ROI. Contact us today to get started!

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