Marketing with Financial Communications for PT Practices

Marketing is most often associated with acquiring new customers, acquisitions, or engaging with existing or previous customers, customer management. Therefore, it is easy to forget that every interaction with a customer is a marketing opportunity. For physical therapy practices, this means from the first postcard a prospective patient receives to their monthly practice newsletter to billing and collections is a marketing opportunity for the clinic. Let’s dive deeper into some of the often overlooked marketing opportunities to see how they can benefit and grow your practice.

Commonly Missed Marketing Opportunities

• Billing
• Collections
• Payment communications or reminders
• Feedback surveys

Now most practice owners will see the above list and question why billing, collections, and payments should be considered marketing opportunities. Typically, these communications occur near the end of the patient’s treatment or soon after they have received PT. Billing, collections, and payments or collectively financial communications are often pain points for both the patient and the practice. Patients are happy and positive while in therapy, but that mood can quickly shift to sad or angry and negative once the bills are received. Clinic staff, especially the front desk and billing departments, often dreads post-treatment communications since many are filled with questions, confusion, and arguments. Why not improve this experience for both your patients and staff by enhancing the marketing content of your practice’s financial communications.

Use marketing best practice in financial communications

• Add empathy: most patients are aware that following treatment, a bill will be coming. They know to expect (and sometimes dread) that thin white bill with the see through address window and enclosed payment envelope. Instead, use branded pieces, such as practice letterhead and envelopes that feel less administrative.
• Keep promoting: bills and collections are at their core—strictly financial communications. But you can add engagement and demonstrate your clinic’s care for its patients by bringing appropriate promotions into these notices. We don’t recommend adding referral programs or incentives (a $500 bill that includes the headline “Refer a friend and get a $20 gift card” seems a bit tacky right?). Look for relevant promotions that can actually benefit your patient and spread good PR about the clinic. Do you offer 10% if the patient pays in full or no interest on installment payments paid within 90 days? Market those programs and benefits. It’s a lot easier to get a bill and see a colorful “Pay in full and receive 10% off your bill”. You may also find that this messaging actually gets patients paying on time and faster.
• Be approachable: patients can be overwhelmed by a long itemized bill. Your team is an expert on medical billing and collections, but most patients only see a few medical bills a year. Adding a simple paragraph explaining the charges and the remaining balance owed can decrease the number of calls to front desk staff and feels transparent and approachable to your patients. Also, if you have a direct line or extension for the billing department, include that prominently with a call to action at the top and bottom of the bill. This will save your front desk from getting billing questions from upset patients and allows them to remain happy and pleasant to greet new patients to the clinic.

Start by thinking about every interaction as a marketing opportunity. Then, you will see where you can make simple changes that can generate big results for your practice. For more tips and recommendations on how to maximize your marketing, check out our blog!

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e-Newsletters Expand Digital Marketing for PT Practices

As practice owners are researching digital marketing options, e-newsletters are becoming a popular method to promote PT services to patients. As a compliment to printed newsletters, an e-newsletter can reiterate marketing content and presents an opportunity to hype additional promotions. e-Newsletters also appeal to a wider audience, such as millennials or other tech-savvy populations, and can be distributed with almost little to no cost to the clinic.

Types of e-Newsletters

• Digital Newsletters: a digital version of a print newsletter. These typically have the exact same content and design as the printed piece, but are converted into a PDF or similar file format that is easy to share electronically. Digital newsletters can be offered in a page-turning format to simulate the experience of reading through a print newsletter.
• Email Newsletters: a newsletter specifically designed to be viewed as an email message. These newsletters often use a web design template or wireframe that allows different content to be added into a repeated layout month after month. Email newsletters can also provide snippets of the articles with read more links that link to the practice website’s blog.

So which type of e-newsletter is the best fit for your practice? First, let’s think about your marketing plan—do you currently publish a monthly print newsletter? If you do print and mail a monthly practice newsletter then a digital newsletter is the best fit for your clinic. You already have the design and content, you just need to make it digitally accessible. Our team at Practice Promotions actually provides page-turning digital newsletters to our Practice Newsletter System clients as a free bonus to accompany their printed newsletters. If you are creating the print newsletter in house each month, you can easily save it as a PDF and upload it to a page-turner host (check out http://ift.tt/1GbhZHv) for a monthly fee.

If you practice isn’t currently creating a print newsletter, you should be writing weekly blog posts for your website. An active blog provides your patients and other web users with educational information and demonstrates your expertise in physical therapy. You can easily convert these blog posts into content for your email newsletters. A web designer can prepare an email template or wireframe that is reusable month to month. You can pull the blog post titles, images, and content into the email template and send it to your email marketing lists. We recommend using read more links that connect back to the original blog post versus having all the post copy in the email. Most emails are read on a mobile device and it is helpful to keep that in mind when designing your template. The read more links will also drive people to your website to continue reading the post, which can expand your web marketing reach to a larger audience.

5 e-Newsletter Best Practices

• Keep the content short, ideally between 300-600 words per article or post
• Use eye-catching images
• Add links to your social media profiles
• Include opt-out information for people who do not wish to receive email communications
• Change up your subject lines to encourage more people to open the e-newsletter each month

For more help with e-newsletters and to get started, contact us today!

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Facebook Post Ideas for PT Clinics

Even the most seasoned social media marketers can struggle with finding new, engaging content to share on Facebook. It is also easy to fall into the routine of just posting versus sharing and actively communicating with your followers. Try to consider mixing up both your post type and content to keep your social media presence viable and to continue attracting more new patients to your practice.

Facebook Post Types

• Text: this post is words only, no images or links. Best suited for status updates or clinic communications, such as snow closures or power outages.
• Photo: this post is mostly a large image with only a short caption or description. Best suited for sharing clinic photos, such as staff fun events, open houses, or community events.
• Links: this post is a combination of words, images, and linked resources. Best suited for linking to blog posts and content from third parties (such as the APTA or Move Forward PT).

When choosing what post type works best for your content, consider how you would want to see that same information presented? Is a short and sweet update a good text post? Or would you want to create a blog post and then post the link to your page? If it’s an early closing or hours change, a text post is perfect. Patients don’t want to have to click open a blog post link to find out about the new hours. Say a long time PT is leaving to work at another clinic- what post type would be best? A text post might not give you enough space to properly explain the departure. Instead, write a blog post to allow you to adequately explain the departure and provide the context needed for a proper press release.

Understanding post types can help you develop a social media marketing calendar that can be sustainably repurposed from week to week or month to month.

5 Days of Facebook Posts:

1. Link to your weekly blog post or an interesting physical therapy article from a third party. Include a short description above the thumbnail image and text preview from the article (Facebook does this for you automatically if you use their post scheduling tool).
2. Share a photo of your clinic. This photo could be a staff photo from a team building event, an “action shot” of your PTs volunteering at a local community event, or an image of a patient with their PT and a testimonial as the caption.
3. Post a text update to remind followers about ongoing promotions. “Only 3 days left to sign up and be entered to win a $25 gift card” or similar messages can be short and sweet.
4. Link to educational content. Mix this up with both content from your website and content from others. Check out Pinterest for fun infographics or easy DIY stretching routines.
5. Post a funny or seasonal Try trends such as #tbt (Throwback Thursday), professional sports, local events etc. to make your page engaging and fun!

For more tips on using social media for PTs, check out our website or our Pinterest boards– we are helping our clients hit the ground running with ready-to-go content for use in their clinic’s social media.

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Sports Marketing and Seasonal Strategies

Sports are a seasonal activity that can generate big revenue for physical therapy practices. From preseason warmups to peak season practices and post season workouts, most athletes are almost constantly participating in one sport or another. As a PT clinic, you can market to specific sports to attract new patients and help former patients get back in the game.

Think about your local community and region—what sports are popular throughout the year? A typical calendar might be:

• Spring Sports
  • Track
  • Baseball
  • Lacrosse
• Summer Sports
  • Swimming
  • Golf
  • Tennis
• Fall Sports
  • Soccer
  • Football
  • Field Hockey
• Winter Sports
  • Basketball
  • Ice Hockey
  • Skiing

Now think about your annual marketing plan—what can you do to incorporate seasonal strategies, such as sports-oriented campaigns and promotions, into your practice’s plan? First, draw connections between the sport and its common injuries, preventative measures, and post-surgical rehabilitation. Then, develop a set of campaigns that target each sport individually. Remember, the marketing message needs to be targeted and clearly communicate to the desired audience. You will see better results and get more engagement, reactivations, and new patients from a promotion that clearly speaks to a specific sport and its PT impacts v. a promotion that tries to address three distinct topics at once.

Sample fall sports marketing strategy:

• Soccer: create a feature article on soccer and its related topics (leg and knee pain, head/neck injuries, agility training, running techniques etc.) for your September newsletter. Include photos showing athletes with a variety of ages (high school to adult). Promote a Free “Back to Sports” Screening.
• Football: this is often one of the most popular fall sports in a local area. Develop a postcard that speaks both to the athlete (usually middle to high school age boys or college athletes if applicable) and their parents. Emphasize safe techniques, muscle conditioning, and injury prevention. Send this in late August to align with the start of the season.
• Field Hockey: while this sport might not be common in all regions, there is usually a women’s sport, such as tennis or track that is popular in the fall months. Research local training clinics or specialty camps that often meet weekly or on the weekends. Reach out to coordinate a partnerships or sponsorship opportunity where your PTs can come to the events and provide on-site support and counseling on injury prevention/rehabilitation. A community event produces lots of good PR about your clinic and allows the PTs to establish connections with parents, coaches, and athletes.

How can you measure the success of your sports marketing campaigns?

Start by tracking the responses to your newsletter, postcard, and event. See how many patients you receive from each promotion. This will help gauge your success for future seasons. Also track what team, league, or school the athletes are coming from—maybe there is a partnership opportunity where you can be the exclusive PT provider? Look for existing partnerships, often teams have a relationship with a local gym or training facility that enables them to use their equipment or staff. Could you coordinate with the partner directly to provide on-site support and PT services?

Using sports marketing for physical therapy can generate new patients and support clinic values / public relations. People forge long-lasting relationships and spread good word of mouth referrals about clinics that provided excellent care when they needed it most. You want your PT practice to be known as “THE” place to go for sports therapy and rehabilitation. Get started today…

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Intake Marketing for New Physical Therapy Patients

Intake marketing is often the first set of communications that a new patient receives about your practice. Have you reviewed and tested your practice’s intake marketing process? Is your staff trained to adapt to different scenarios? Have you solicited feedback from new patients, typically after their first appointment, about their intake experience? It is critical that those initial touch-points between the patient and your office are important, memorable, and positive.

A sample intake marketing process includes:

• Receiving an appointment request either from the patient directly or from a physician referral
• Calling the patient to confirm the appointment and verifying contact information, insurance etc.
  • If a referral, you should also call the doctor’s office to confirm that any appointment was booked and to inquire as to any feedback that doctor might have regarding the patient’s diagnosis and treatment
• During the confirmation call, the office staff should:
  • Verify only the essentials: name, phone number, referring physician and insurance provider
  • Ask the patient if they are familiar with your website and encourage them to review the content and complete the new patient forms (which should be clearly listed in the site’s primary navigation or homepage)
  • Ask the patient how they prefer to be contacted
• After the call, start marketing to the patient:
  • Send a welcome postcard
  • Prepare their new patient packet, giveaways etc.
• At the first appointment
  • Confirm that patient’s full contact information (address, email etc.)
    • Include a checkbox on your new patient form for opting-in to receive email marketing and communications
  • Explain your incentive programs, such as a referral bonus
    • If your clinic is running more than 3 referral programs, choose the top 1-2 that you think a new patient might be interested in. It can be overwhelming to listen to 5 programs and try to remember the details.
  • Give a brief overview of your routine marketing. This should be a <2 minute run down of the communications you will be sending: newsletters, email updates, incentive postcards This warms up the patient to your intake process and gets them prepped for future marketing.
  • Once the patient is checked-in, enter their full information and add them to your distribution lists. If the patient has asked not to receive a specific communication, such as please do not call or please do not mail, note that clearly in your system (or do not add them to your campaign specific lists).

Now you might be wondering why “Ask the patient how they prefer to be contacted” is called out in the intake process. Most practices automatically add the patient into their records system and update their contact methods: phone, email, and address into all marketing systems. Therefore, the patient might receive a call, a text, an email, and a mailed letter that all provide the same information. This can be helpful for some patients, but can be frustrating for others. Here are some example intake scenarios to guide your process:

• Jenny is a busy working mom. She really only wants to receive emails about her appointments, but wouldn’t mind reading the monthly newsletter. However, if your intake process doesn’t ask for preferred contact method, Jenny might receive a call, a voicemail, a text, and an email about her first appointment. She might feel overwhelmed or frustrated that she is getting multiple notifications. She also might get confused and think that the details are changes due to the multiple communications. Instead, send her an email with a link to Click to Confirm her first appointment.
• Edith is an 80 year old retiree. She has a cell phone, but it is often turned off, and email address, but only checks it once a week. She wants to receive calls to the house phone and would enjoy being mailed promotions and monthly marketing. If you call her cell phone, send a text, and an email—she might not read the communication for several days. Edith will call the office to ask why she received the call, text, and email and might be confused or stressed by the experience.

You probably have had a patient fall into each of the scenarios above. Your staff has dealt with the annoyed professional who is getting too many communications or the senior citizen who panics because they think they have missed something due to marketing to under used channels. Solving for the preferred contact method will streamline your intake process and ensure that patients have an ideal experience when they first come to your PT practice.

For more recommendations and personalized consultations, give us a call or sign up for our webinar!

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Sustainable Practice Management and Marketing

Most physical therapy marketing blogs, including ours, focus on getting more new patients and growing your practice. But, what if you are happy with your practice’s size, number of patient visits, and revenue? What can you to do sustainably manage your PT practice? From your print to digital marketing and across your staff and departments, your clinic needs to continue to adapt and change, even if growth is not a key objective of your business plan.

4 Principles of Sustainable Practice Management and Marketing:

1. Keep Marketing

Marketing supports ALL your business plans and goals, not just growth-oriented ones. You still need to run marketing campaigns and programs to support consistent patient and referral volumes.

On a monthly basis, every PT practice should:

• Send a newsletter to patients and doctors
• Complete at least 4 offices visits (1 per week)
• Review your website and make updates
• Post at least 2x per week on social media

2. Monitor Stats and Analytics

Practice owners and VPs should be able to tell you exactly how many patient visits and the number of referrals for each week. Sustainable management is rooted in knowing your business stats and analytics. If you don’t watch the numbers, you might see visits slip by 1 or 2 per week…but at the end of a month that is 4-8 visits (or $400-$800 in revenue). A good checkpoint is to compare the monthly number of patient visits and referrals against last month’s data and last year’s data for the same month. If you are within <10% difference, then you are on track!

3. Watch the Competition

Sustainable maintenance does not equal static maintenance. Your practice still needs to keep current and dynamically adapt to changes in your local market and industry trends. This is a great opportunity to use social media to do some of the work for you! Like the Facebook pages and follow the Twitter handles of other clinics in town to stay up to date on what they are doing. You can check these updates 2x per week when you post to your own clinic’s accounts. Watch for announcements on new treatments being provided (dry needling, personal training, yoga), new sister clinics, relocations, or mergers. This information can have big impacts for your stats and business.

4. Plan for Big Projects

Most of your monthly marketing projects should become fairly automated over time. However, sustainability needs to be supported by larger, marketing projects that can keep your programs up to date.

• Create a marketing plan with 4-6 big projects for the year.
• Segment them out bi-monthly or quarterly and look for efficiencies.
• Try and pair one management project with a “growth” project to keep your practice well-organized and current

Some examples of “big” projects are:

• Redoing your website (design, content, SEO, functionality etc.)
• Creating a stock of newsletter content for future use
• Updating your logo and branded office supplies
• Renovating the waiting area
• Adding a new social media platform such as Twitter or LinkedIn
• Refreshing office and complex signage (especially for outside signage)
• Introducing a new service and planning for a promotional launch

These principles of sustainable practice management can easily be applied to clinics in both maintenance and growth phases of their business cycle. For those in maintenance mode, the key takeaway is be current to be sustainable.

For more ways to stay current and info on the latest PT marketing trends and strategies, check out our blog and follow us on Twitter!

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Using a Blog to Expand Your Digital Marketing

Did you know that over 40% of companies use a blog as a key marketing tool? Most importantly, prioritizing a company blog leads to a 13x increase in ROI from marketing. And that over 46% of people read at least one blog on a daily basis? (Source: http://ift.tt/1gLEWpM) Just by reading this post, you too have read at least one blog today!

What is a blog?

A blog is a series of content that has a shared theme or topics and is regularly posted online via a website or social media.

Many practice owners struggle to understand the business value of a blog. Why should time, resources, and effort be spent on maintaining a company blog? What measurable impacts can your clinic see from online postings? Does anyone really read blogs and will my patients read it?

First, stop thinking about a blog as a personal diary, which is a common misconception. Yes, there are definitely personal blogs where someone will write about their day or experiences. But, blogging has crossed the border from personal to professional and now it is common practice for most professionals, especially marketers, to blog on a frequent basis. For example, many Fortune 500 companies now manage both internal and external blogs with content ranging from sharing business updates and future plans/projects (internal) to customer education or industry resources (external).

Why should your practice have a blog?

• Marketing Content and Updates: practices often have a TON of content at their disposal. Sharing that content with your patients helps to build a relationship with them and shows that you are an expert physical therapist.

You can also share clinic updates at greater detail. Did you change what insurance plans are accepted in office? You can post that on social media or add it to your emails and newsletter. But will patients and doctors want more information? Or do you feel that a longer explanation is needed (good PR)? That would make a great blog post that you can link to from social media and emails and reference in your print newsletter.

• Public Relations and Marketing Communication: we started to reference this in the first bullet, but your office’s PR can be easily shared across multiple platforms and media with a blog. Think of a blog post as a library book—you write one post with all the information and details. From an article about how PT can help sports rehab for ACL injuries to a letter informing patients that you now accept cash payments, blog posts are a blank canvas for information. And, just like a library book, you can “checkout” that information and reference it for different marketing purposes:
  • Website updates
  • Social Media posts: add the link to “Read more”
  • Emails and eNewsletters

• Website Content and SEO: adding a blog to your website and updating it regularly with posts will increase traffic to your site and improve your search engine rankings (SEO). By adding a link to another page within your site to each blog post, users are much more likely to visit that page and read your content. This helps to educate potential patients and builds a relationship and good PR with users.

Blog posts should always be optimized for organic search. Use keywords that you want to rank well on and that are not currently found on other pages within your site. For example, say you are sponsoring a local baseball team. Write blog posts with updates on the team, ways to stay fit for baseball, PT tips etc. Use the team, league, or division in the SEO data so that your involvement and community activism is evident via online search.

Whether you are looking to redesign your website or simply want to add a blog and content services to your existing marketing plans, the expert team at Practice Promotions can help! We have topic suggestions, copy examples, and industry experience to make your blog a viable, profitable marketing asset!

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4 Design Guidelines for Effective Print Marketing

Knowing what to say and how to say it are two of the biggest marketing challenges faced by practice owners. It is easy to become overwhelmed with choices and not as easy to eliminate concepts. When it comes to your print campaigns and promotions, follow these design guidelines that will support your marketing goals and generate more business for your clinic.

1. Choose the right piece and size

Cost should not be the driving factor in determining what type of print campaign to run. Too often, practice owners try to go with the cheapest option (usually a postcard) and attempt to fit all their content into a small space. We recommend:

• Newsletters for monthly campaigns, educational articles, multiple photos, and most promotions requiring more than 500 words
• Letters for more formal communications (such as changes to policies or procedures), personalized messages, and doctor/referral campaigns
• Trifold mailers for announcing new services (especially those that might require additional explanation or supporting messaging), auxiliary services (personal training, massage, yoga etc.), and monthly doctor mailings
• Postcards for special promotions (seasonal, new clinic locations, new services etc.), targeted patient reactivation campaigns, and accompaniments to larger monthly mailers

2. Define your messaging and imagery

Choose a goal for each campaign and promotion. Do you want to reactivate past patients? Get referrals from new doctors’ offices? Introduce a new PT treatment option? Think about the goal and make sure all design elements are aligned towards achieving that goal.

3. (Font) Size matters

Now that you have defined your messaging, use the design to give different priorities or font categories to streamline that message. Some examples are:

• Headlines: key phrase or call to action. These should be the biggest font size and can utilize bolding or Note: try to avoiding bolding (and italicizing) with some fonts as it can be hard to read.
• Subheadlines: supporting phrases or taglines. These should be smaller sizes than the headlines and could be
• Body copy: text for articles, paragraphs, or bullets. Use a font size that is readable (especially if your practice has a large senior patient base). If you have to drop the font size below 10pts, consider shortening the copy.
• CTAs or Calls-To-Action: these can be either standalone phrases (Call Today for an Appointment) or at the end of articles/paragraphs. Use a font size in between the headlines and subheadlines. If the CTA is at the end of a body of copy, use bolding or italicizing to make it stand out.

4. Less is More, Keep it Simple

Years of experience as the private practice marketing experts has taught us that the most common mistake is trying to cram too much information into a single campaign. Many practice owners look at the cost of a piece and want to feature as many promotions or incentives as possible in order to “maximize” the pieces’ value. But does that logic of “the more messaging, the better” really work?

No, more messaging equals more confusing and less initiative. Think about this—you send out a postcard for “Swing into Summer” featuring a couple golfing and talking about your shoulder pain rehabilitation services and the CTA of schedule your appointment to get back on the course today! What is the #1 takeaway for patients? Go to PT (asap!) so that they can play golf without pain. Clear design, seasonal and concise messaging, and a directive CTA make it clear what actions the patient should take.

Now think about the same postcard, Swing into Summer, but let’s add a list of all the services you provide, plus a coupon for a free water bottle, and a biography about the new PTA you recently hired. What is the #1 takeaway? It could still be: Go to PT so that you can golf without pain, or Wow look at all the services they provide, or Cool a free water bottle, or Great a new PTA joined the practice. Say 100% of people who receive the postcard read it. Probably 40% will take away the “Go to PT” messaging, 30% might be intrigued by the services (but not necessarily feel the need to go to PT), 20% might want a free water bottle, and 10% might like the new PTA’s bio. So roughly 40% of your recipients will see you for PT.

Think back to the clear, concise, and directive postcard version. There is only one takeaway- 100% of recipients will know to see you for PT. That’s 60% more potential patients to you clinic!

Let’s recap, the best PT print marketing designs have:

• The right size and piece for the content

• A clearly defined messaging and imagery strategy

• Appropriate font sizes to support the messaging

• Clean, simple, and directive promotions

Learn more about designing print marketing for physical therapy with our FREE webinar! Sign up today

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