Instagram, Snapchat—What’s Next for Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is ever evolving, from new updates and features to entirely new platforms. For most PT practices, it can be challenging to keep up with the latest trends and manage your existing platforms. How do you know where to put your resources and time? What platform is giving you the best return on investment? What is the true value of social media?

Social Media Marketing and the Big 3

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the big 3 of social media. With the lion’s share of active users, these platforms have key similarities and differences that make them still one of the most wide spectrum lenses of business’ social media marketing. Twitter continues to grow in followers and increased engagements, quickly becoming the top social media platform for many objectives. Tweets are short, sweet, and to the point. You can send 2-3 tweet per day without risking being too spammy for followers. Twitter also continues to roll out advancements that boost performance. For example, Twitter Cards are simple codes that you have a developer add to your website. Once that code is properly installed, your tweets automatically have added features that increase impressions, clicks, and engagements. If you aren’t already using Twitter or Twitter Cards, learn how to get started today.

LinkedIn also continues to grow in users, though it is decidedly more oriented towards professionals and job seekers. PT practices benefit from using LinkedIn for two main reasons: public relations and recruitment. LinkedIn is a great platform for connecting with doctors, medical representatives, and professional organizations (ie. APTA). Maintaining a business profile and syncing your regular social media posts to go to that account keeps your presence active without adding much additional effort. You can also easily recruit new PTs and staff through LinkedIn and those candidates will often check out your business page to get a feel for the practice. We don’t recommend spending more than 30 minutes or so a week on LinkedIn (unless you are actively recruiting) as the ROI in terms of getting new patients is not really high for this platform.

Facebook continues to be a front-runner for social media, but is starting to see a decline in both users and engagements. Most practices are already active on Facebook and this platform is the bulk of their social media marketing. We definitely recommend continuing to market your practice on Facebook, but monitor the engagements. Also, if you are running monthly paid marketing campaigns—closely watch the quality of the results as compared to your business metrics. Are you seeing a lot of likes, but not necessarily new patients? As more customers leave Facebook in favor of other platforms, you might not be able to attract the same quality leads.

The Future of Social Media Marketing

As the playing field changes, your marketing needs to adapt to the new ground rules. If a new platform gains traction (think Instagram, Snapchat etc.), be sure to set up your business profile to ensure that you protect your brand image. Whether Instagram is the next Facebook (or not), you want to ensure that your practice’s name and  account are secured for future use and marketing.

If you do want to try a new social media marketing tactic- start small and closely monitor the results over time. Its easy to see huge growth in the beginning and have that taper off after a few weeks. Conversely, it might be hard to get the wheels turning with attracting new followers and figuring out what to post and when. The new platforms are not a one to one match to Facebook. They are more specific and require different marketing strategies and content.

Want to learn more about social media marketing for PT practices? Stay tuned for new blogs and tips to help you maximize your results!

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Best Practices for Reactivating Patients

Reactivating patients is key to building a loyal group of clients that both visit your clinic and that refer their friends and family to your practice. There are two key strategies for reactivating past patients—including targeted messaging or content in routine marketing campaigns, such as your practice newsletter or on your website, and creating specific promotions to drive reactivation, such as a postcard or incentive program. Let’s look at best practices for both strategies to see what is a good fit for your clinic and when to use different tactics.

Reactivating Patients with Monthly Marketing Campaigns

One of the easiest ways to grow your practice is by reactivating past patients. These individuals have already experienced great care and PT with your clinic and are significantly more likely to return for future needs. Think about a patient like a car owner—most people will continue to buy the same make of car if they have a good experience with their previous model. And, if they receive good customer service at a local dealership, they will be much more likely to purchase another vehicle from them. The same goes for physical therapy, if someone has a good experience and feels better after PT, then they will be more likely to seek PT over other treatment options in the future. And, if they receive quality care and customer service at your clinic, they will be more likely to return to see you for PT.

Your monthly marketing campaigns should also include content and messaging that capitalizes on reactivating past patients. But, you need to be sure to refresh that marketing occasionally to ensure the message stays current. Try these ideas to keep your reactivation marketing fresh:

• Use seasonal imagery and messaging (think snowflakes for winter or gardening photos for spring)
• Change the incentive bi-monthly to attract different patients. You can offer a Free Screening, 10% Off, or a Free Exercise Class—each will resonate differently with patients.
• Move the layout and placement. If you usually feature the reactivation marketing on the last page, try moving it to the exercise section or the mail panel.

Your monthly marketing campaigns almost always reach past patients and are the perfect place to promoting reactivation.

Reactivating Patients with Promotions

Look back at last year’s monthly stats—when did your practice experience a dip in patient volumes? Now look 2 months ahead of that dip, that is when you want to start running a promotional campaign to reactivate past patients. Promotional campaigns can take on a variety of tactics. One consideration is that you should be able to execute these promotions quickly and without a lot of effort or costs. We recommend postcards and email marketing as two easy and inexpensive options.

Postcard promotions should include eye-catching imagery, simple text, and a big Call-to-Action (CTA). Reactivation campaigns can perform well with pain imagery, really driving home the need to go the PT. Lighten up the tone with positive copy “Ready to be Pain Free?” to keep the messaging positive. Use your practice’s brand colors to create a big CTA and include an expiration date. The date encourages people to mark their calendars and get into PT sooner to be able to take advantage of the offer.

Emails can also drive reactivations especially for practices that do not have monthly email marketing campaigns. These almost act like a digital postcard. Keep the messaging and content short and sweet. Try using healthy imagery and positive messaging for emails. Patients tend to find negative or pain messaging discouraging online and often respond best to a happy photo and encouraging message, “Get Back in the Game” with a picture of grandparents playing ball with the grandkids for example. Include a big CTA “Click to Book Your Appointment Today” and include an expiration date.

Want more best practices for physical therapy marketing and business management? Check out our blog or call us today!

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Marketing Analysis for PT Practices

Our last blog talked about using your practice’s data and statistics to prepare your annual marketing plan. Now let’s dive deeper into marketing analysis and how to choose the right campaigns and promotions to reach your practice goals.

Growth trends are when your practice is seeing an increase over the last time range measured. This could mean that you saw more patients or received more referrals than the same time period last week or last month, depending on your statistic range. Growth trends should be celebrated, and they should also be reviewed to see what caused the increase. A marketing analysis can indicate whether the growth was due to internal or external factors. Internal factors could be sending more newsletters, mailing a new postcard campaign, or posting more on social media. External factors should also be considered and could be changes in the competitive market, changes in your practice operations (ie. appointment hours or accepted insurances), or new legislation such as direct access.

Flat trends occur when your stats are consistent for a time period. Don’t get too bogged down in the details of consistent. If the change is less than 5-10% (depending on the size of your practice) then it is most likely a flat trend. A marketing analysis for flat trends should include reviewing routine marketing campaigns to see if they need to be refreshed. If you have been sending out 4,000 newsletters per month to the same address and aren’t seeing growth, then its time to revamp your marketing. This could mean getting a more up to date patient list, increasing the number of pieces (we recommend adding 500 pieces to start), or sourcing new content to increase engagement. Not all flat trends are bad—if your practice is operating at 90-100% capacity and seeing flat trends then you are right on track! Now would be the time to do a more business oriented analysis to determine whether you need to expand operations or if you are on a sustainable track.

Loss trends usually strike fear in the heart of practice owners and marketers. Instead, look at a loss as an opportunity and not a failure. A marketing analysis of a loss can be infinitely more beneficial than an analysis of a growth or flat trend. When analyzing the loss, keep an open mind and explore different possibilities—both internal and external to your clinic.

Marketing Analysis of Loss Trends

If you experience a loss trend, there are typically two factors: seasonality or market change. Seasonality can be determined by looking at that month’s stats for the year prior. If you experience a similar trend last year, this year’s trend (if it is roughly the same) is due to seasonal impacts. Most practices see season losses during the later summer months (July and August) and winter holidays (December and January). A marketing analysis and recommended course of action for seasonality is to increase marketing campaigns for the 4-6 weeks prior to the loss month. For example, if patient volumes drop off in December, then increase your newsletters, social media, and promotions during October and November to bring in a steady stream of patients through the end of the year.

Market changes occur when there is an unexpected loss trend—something that is unprecedented based on last year’s or last month’s data. As soon as you see a market change that leads to a loss, start your marketing analysis. External factors can drive changes are might be easier to identify so we recommend starting with them first. Some example questions to ask are:

• What is the competitive landscape? Did a new practice open? Did a competitor expand their offerings or network (ie. merge with a hospital)?
• What about your referral relationships? Did doctors change offices or leave practice? Check your relationships by comparing this month’s referrals to last months.
• Did your state adopt direct access? Did a major insurance company change its policies?

All these questions can quickly help you identify if an external factor resulted in a loss trend.

Internal factors are sometimes harder to identify. We suggest taking a look at last month’s marketing to see if anything changed. Some key items to check are:

• Direct mail marketing quantities: did you decrease your number of mailed pieces?
• Frequency of blog posts or social media updates: did you post less often or are you not as active on a certain platform?
• Business operations: did you change your hours, staff, or services offered?

All of these factors are critical to performing an accurate marketing analysis. If you answered “yes” to any of the above, then your loss trend is caused by an internal factor.

Now, what should you do? Get back on track! If you decreased the quantity of mailed marketing pieces, increase back up to the previous levels (or send extras to offset this month’s loss). If you changed your digital marketing, consider going back to business as usual or move forward with the changes, but look at other options to increase communications.

Business operations are often the toughest challenge to solve as these decisions are usually made after careful review and planning. But, you can use marketing to compensate for business changes. If you shortened hours or decreased staff, send more pieces to drive up volumes (to a manageable level). If you changed your service offerings, consider running a special promotion hyping a treatment that you don’t usually market such as neck pain relief or post-surgical rehab.

A marketing analysis takes your practice’s statistics and provides realistic solutions to the trends experienced. Once you develop the habit of doing monthly and annual analyses, you will be able to quickly adjust your business and marketing operations to support goals and financial objectives.

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Preparing Your Annual Marketing Plan for Private Practices

As the year comes to a close, it’s time to start your annual marketing plan for the coming year. Whether this is your first year writing an annual plan or you’re a pro, there are some key best practices that can take your marketing and clinc to new levels for next year. The goal with any annual marketing plan is to look back at last year and learn from your experiences. Then, take these learnings and develop projects and goals to support your business development.

A Year in Review: Data and Statistics

Pull your monthly reports for patient visits and doctor referrals (add other reports as helpful). Now pull the year prior (2 years ago) to do a year over year and month over month analysis. Your objective is to take a quick snapshot to see trends in visits and referrals and to identify any changes that could have contributed to these trends. For the year over year analysis, did you see more patients and get more referrals (ie. Did your business grow, stay consistent, or decline)? Both growth and consistency are favorable outcomes—sometimes depending on the month, business and market changes etc. a month of consistency can bring stability to your practice and staff. If you saw a drastic increase in appointments, what could have contributed to this growth? Did another clinic in town close, did you add a new PT, did you extend your hours? Be fair and realistic when reviewing your stats—it’s tempting to attribute all growth to “doing a good job” but there are usually quantifiable factors that influence the business.

Now look at the month to month statistics: which three months were your top performers and which were the three worst? Typically, year to year, certain months or seasons see consistent growth based on the month prior and year prior. And certain months (usually around the winter and holidays) are slower or experience a drop in volumes. Now look at your top three months as compared to the marketing campaigns and promotions. Did you revamp your website, increase newsletter quantities, or mail a postcard? Or did you add staff, offer a new treatment, or expand your hours? All of these factors can help determine what worked last year in terms of getting more patients to PT and what you should continue doing or implement for the coming year.

Your annual marketing plan should also work to improve periods of decreased volumes. Did you experience a winter slump? Are summers slow due to vacations? Do you have a seasonal population (ie. snow birds or college students) that impacts monthly and annual numbers? Identifying these declines and planning to offset them via your annual marketing plan is key to continuing to grow and stabilize your practice. Our next blog post will dive deeper into how to choose the best marketing solution to suit your business development plans, but let’s take a high level look at some planning methods and options.

Planning Ahead with an Annual Marketing Plan

Your annual marketing plan shouldn’t be a huge PowerPoint presentation or binder full of calendars that gets stuck on a shelf from February to December. To be truly valuable and successful, your annual marketing plan needs to be organized, realistic, and responsive based on your practice’s needs.

Be organized. Develop a process that works for each month regardless of the season. Your marketing plan should have a monthly checklist for routine projects and then a calendar overview with special events, holidays etc. Don’t go overboard—we have all seen the monthly calendars jammed with marketing campaigns that never get executed because reality sets in. Your annual marketing plan is a plan not a to-do list. For example, to offset the holiday slowdown, put a calendar event for “Planning Session: December marketing revamp” in September so that the end of year work is already on your radar and that you have enough time to execute new campaigns.

Be realistic. A good checks and balances for your annual marketing plan is to set a list of goals to achieve for the year ahead. The practice’s business development goals should be heavily utilized to inform this list. If you want to increase patients by 10% then develop marketing goals to achieve that figure. Maybe you want to increase newsletter mailings to an additional 500 patients, add a new social media channel, and expand your partnership with the rec soccer league. These are all strong ideas to use marketing to grow your practice and can support the 10% growth goal. The key is to be realistic and don’t attempt to accomplish all key initiatives in January. Work on these big projects one at a time and space them out for a few months or quarters.

Be responsive. In 12 months, the clinic and its marketing program could have totally changed. Your annual marketing plan needs to be flexible in order to be truly helpful throughout the year. If you monthly data and statistics review indicates an increase or decrease in volumes that was not experienced last year, you should respond to that change and adjust your planned marketing. For example, in October, a nearby clinic closes and you start seeing a growth in patient volumes. But, your marketing plan says to increase campaigns and promotions to offset the winter slump. If you don’t revise your plan to reflect the growth trend, you could increase marketing and generate patient volumes that are not sustainable for the clinic. Instead, repurpose your November and December efforts to refreshing and reprinting your new patient packets. This change of course ensures that you keep marketing, but that you focus attentions toward projects that are needed in the moment.

For more help analyzing your statistics and preparing your annual marketing plan, talk with the experts. Our team has helped practices, large and small, develop sustainable campaigns and projects that complement the practice’s annual marketing plan. Give us a call today!

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