PT Marketing Unleashed

Physical Therapy Marketing Ideas To Help You Stand Out From The Crowd

Samuel — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 13:04:12 +0000

In this video I talk about why you should think outside the box and use a few unconventional marketing strategies to help build your patient or client referral base. I must admit that some of these strategies are probably a little bit different than what you are used to doing traditionally. However isn’t that what you want? To be different from your competitors so that you can clearly stand out from the rest of them?

Start training yourself to think differently with your marketing approach. If you are competing for business in your local area, see what what your competitors are doing and think of how you can do it differently or better.

Through my experience in business I learned that doing the same things others are doing in marketing will not get you notice. Be BOLD! Try new things and don’t be afraid to take risks. It is one of the ways your physical therapy business will see growth.

What are your thoughts? Don’t be shy. Please share below.

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Use This Checklist To Keep Your Physical Therapy Website A Success

Samuel — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 06:55:11 +0000

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that every business should have a web presence. Years ago, all it took to have a successful physical therapy practice was a sign out front, a strong referral base and an advertisement in the Yellow Pages.

Now, it is absolutely essential to have a powerful website that will grab your visitors attention and persuade them to act. Here are some great tips to beef up the web presence of your physical therapy website and increase the profitability of your physical therapy business.

Keep Your Content Fresh

There is nothing more detrimental to physical therapists than having outdated information on their websites. Visitors surely don’t want to see old services or content that are no longer relevant or being offered by your practice. Neglecting the content on your site could also have visitors who would have become patients thinking that you are no longer in business. You should take a hard look at your physical therapy website every month to ensure that all of the information and services you offer are up to date.

Get SEO ASAP

As physical therapists, we know exactly what we need to do clinically when treating patients. However, most of us are completely lost when it comes to building a website and creating content that will make your physical therapy office rank high among the search engines for your local area. Let’s face it, the competition for patient refferals in the physical therapy field is becoming fierce on a local level. You will need high quality content that is search engine optimized for your website and that targets your specific patient population that you treat in your clinic. The content must be absolutely original or the search engines will not consider your website as a site that provides value or seen as an authority site. You might need to hire a professional writer to create your content. However the cost will be well worth the increase of traffic to your physical therapy website and help to grow your business.

Clean Up Your Act

They say that a picture paints a thousand words but if the pictures on your physical therapy website are grainy or old, it’s time to break out the camera. It’s best to update your photos regularly. Potential clients or patients like to get a bit of a preview of the facilities and the people working at your physical therapy office. This makes them more comfortable when they come in for their first appointment. Be sure that the pictures are high resolution and portray your business in the absolute best light. This will improve the image of your web presence and make visitors want to make an appointment at your physical therapy office.

Make the Most of Media

Although pictures are a great way to allow your visitors to preview your physical therapy facility and your staff, they can be a bit boring. Most successful physical therapists have begun to embrace other forms of media for their websites. You can hook your visitors as soon as they get to your site with a killer video about your services and a virtual tour of the office. Podcasts and slideshows are also helpful. The key to making media work for you is to make the visitor feel like they have a personal connection with your office and staff. This will make them want to pick up the phone and call to schedule an appointment.

Improve Your Social Standing

More and more business owners are recognizing the importance of using social media to market their services and products. The use of Facebook, LinkedIn, Google + and twitter are essential for growing your physical therapy practice and keeping your business in the front of their minds. I won’t suggest doing this all by yourself as you may already know, social media can be a huge time suck! However hiring the right people or even training some of your office staff in delivering effective communication through your social media outlets can prove to be beneficial to your physical therapy practice in the long run. There are a lot of social media tools that can help integrate conversations on your website and social media outlets and encourage visitors to get involved in those conversations and call you for an appointment.

Keep It Short and Sweet

The content on your website can either make or break your web presence. There are a lot of physical therapists who simply put as much information as possible on each page. This is a bad idea. When a physical therapy website bombards the visitors with too much information, the visitors tend to click the back button and find another website. This could be costing you a potential referral or client. People want to be able to click on the page with the information that they are looking for and act on it. The content on your site should be informative but short and to the point unless you are posting articles on your website. Keep your content short and your visitors will have your phones ringing off the hook.

Puff Out Your Chest

Bragging is never a good thing but you really must let your visitors know why they should choose your physical therapy office over your competitors. The “About Us” page is the perfect place to show off your education and that of your staff. Your credentials will improve your visitor’s ability to trust you and cause them to act. Also having a testimonial page helps build trust among those who are not familiar with your physical therapy practice. On this page you can have video or written testimonials of some of your past clients or patients and have them tell their story of how great it was to come into your physical therapy practice and be treated by your staff.

Fast Is Better Than Furious

People who are searching for physical therapists online have very short attention spans. If your physical therapy website takes time to load, they will be aggravated and click the back button in search of another office in your area. You need to make sure that your site loads quickly and is error free. Get rid of any flash or animated intros. They are no longer effective and can hinder your users experience visiting your site. The size of the images and other media files can cost your visitors time if they take a long time to load. It is of the utmost importance that you ensure that your web presence is optimized for quick loading.

Smooth Sailing

Every physical therapy website owner should make sure that their web presence is easy to navigate. Confusing your visitors will only cause them to go to your competitor’s website. Of course, you know how to locate all of the information on your own site but you should take a look at your web presence through the eyes of your visitors. Be sure that your navigation menu is easy to find and that it works without any glitches. It might be wise to add a sitemap and a search tool to make it easier for your visitors. The simpler it is for people to find the information that they need, the higher the chance of them calling your physical therapy office for services.

Out With the Old

At some point, nearly everybody has tried to access a website that had Flash from their phone. It takes too long on the typical computer, let alone trying to get it to load on a Smartphone, iPhone or iPad. Flash is a thing of the past so kick it to the curb and make room for HTML5 and other forms of new technology that provide quicker access to your physical therapy website.

Going Mobile

In the United States, nearly ninety percent of adults and over half of all teenagers have cell phones with internet capability. You simply must ensure that your physical therapy website can be accessed easily by cell phone and smart phone users. Depending upon your web hosting service, you might need to create mobile apps for access to your website content. I will go in detail in a later blog post on developing mobile strategies for your physical therapy website so make sure you connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or via email with the links at the bottom right of this website.

Reel Them In

The most widely forgotten yet incredibly important thing that physical therapists forget on their websites is the call to action. The information that you provide just isn’t enough to make people run to the phone to make an appointment. They are lazy and they want you to tell them what to do next. You simply must tell them what they need to do and the funny thing is that if the site is credible, most visitors will actually make the call. Just tell them what they need to do and they will come through.

Hope you found this helpful. Please pay it forward and share on your favorite social network with any of the links above or below this post.Similar Posts:

2012 Physical Therapy Marketing Predictions

Samuel — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:25:25 +0000

In this video I share with you my 2012 physical therapy marketing predictions that could make an impact in your physical therapy practice. Some of this years predictions are similar to the 2011 physical therapy marketing predictions. Only this year I added some emerging technologies and strategies that are starting to catch on fire!

You might want to get a cup of your favorite Starbucks coffee ( Grande) because this video is quite long. Didn’t plan it that way but I had to make sure you see all the possibilities of marketing your practice in the new year.

To make it easy for you to digest, I have broken down the video into a topic timeline with the exact time frame of the topics that I go into. So if you need to take a break and come back to the video, you can start it off at a different point where I start a new topic. So please take a look at the video. Let me know your thoughts. I’m interested in knowing what your plans are for your physical therapy business this year.

Video Timeline

00:22 Online & Offline Marketing Strategies Merging

02:27 Mobile & Local Search

03:09 Social Media Management

06:14 Email Marketing

06:43 Patient Focused Content Delivery

09:18 Integration Marketing

11:19 Patient Testimonials On Video

12:06 Leverage Your Time By Outsourcing

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5 Tips To Drive Traffic To Your Physical Therapy Website

Samuel — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 05:28:17 +0000

Recently I have been getting emails by PT’s who have their own website with questions about how to generate website traffic. Some of these PT’s are in private practice or offer physical therapy continuing education courses. I thought it would be a great idea to answer some of these questions here on the blog.

Basically there are many ways you can drive traffic to your physical therapy website. I won’t go through all of them because there are just too many to cover. However I can give you the 5 most effective ways you can start generating traffic to your website that you can use right away. These tips will help increase exposure to your website online and bring in either potential referrals for your clinic or attendees for your PT ceu course.

SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is one of the most effective and popular ways of getting traffic to your website. By using the right targeted keywords in your website, it can position your website high on the search engine result pages. This makes it easier for potential visitors to see your website and know more about your PT clinic or ceu course.

You can optimize your website for maximum search by choosing keywords your target audience is typing into Google to find your services. For example, if you are a physical therapist with a focus on pediatrics in the Atlanta GA area then you would optimize your site using local keywords like “Atlanta Pediatric Physical Therapist” or “Pediatric Physical Therapy In Atlanta”.

Having two to three main keyword phrases per page should be enough to start driving the right amount of targeted visitors to your website. Below is a screenshot example of someone typing into Google “Atlanta Pediatric Physical Therapy” and the listed results that come up on the first page. You want to have your private practice be one of the first few results listed so a potential patient referral can stumble onto your site early when doing a search for your services.

Placing your keywords in the right place also plays a vital part in the optimization of your website. The best places for your keywords are in the title tags of your website pages, inserting them into your meta tag keywords and meta tag description of all your pages and most importantly in the content of your website pages. If you are not sure where all these these things belong or don’t how to optimze your website, then you may have to ask your webmaster. I do offer in-depth SEO training for physical therapists in the
PT Marketing Academy where I explain how to optimize your website for search in step by step video tutorials.

Now what you don’t want to do is stuff your website with all kinds of unrelated keywords. This hit or miss approach is not good SEO practice and it makes your website look super spammy. When adding your main keywords to your website content make sure it reads well and that it provides value to your reader. Regardless if you attract visitors through good SEO, if your website content reads like crap then no one is going to stick around to read it.

Email Marketing

Sending email newsletters is a good way to keep your message and personal branding in front of your existing patients or email subscribers. With this type of marketing you are connecting with your audience and building a relationship through valuable content you provide to them. This is the best medium to show your expertise by discussing things related to their functional lives ( i.e injury prevention, back safety, postural awareness, etc ).

Some physical therapy newsletters I have read have strategically placed links to their website articles in the newsletter. This forces you to go back to their website. This is a great idea because it drives the traffic back to your site and it gives your subscribers a chance to learn more about your PT clinic and the services you offer.

You can also encourage your newsletter subscribers to share your content with their social media community on Facebook and Twitter to drive even more potential traffic. Make sure to provide the right call to action buttons in your newsletter so subscribers can share your content with others. People may forget to share your content after reading it. So giving them a little nudge from a strategically placed call to action button at the end can help get your content get passed along for others to read.

Social Media

Social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube have tons of traffic in them already. All you need is a virtual pipeline to funnel the targeted traffic from those social media websites to your own. Below are a few things I have found to be the best way to utilize social media sites and to drive traffic back to your website.

The most effective way to use Social Media:

1. Create discussion groups. Get people talking by creating specific support groups based on the types of patients you see in the clinic. Examples would be groups catering to people dealing with post-op hip replacement, knee replacement, etc. As a PT CEU Instructor, maybe you can create a group around a particular treatment technique used in the clinic and offer case studies to the group. There are many things you can do to get the conversation going and effectively get people to visit your website for more information about you and your services.

2. Provide Q & A sessions for your online communities. By answering questions in your social community you are displaying your expert status in your profession. You will also be looked at as a resource for solid information. That is a good thing! Doing this builds trust and makes people want to learn more about you and your PT practice.

3. Reach out to potential referral makers in your local area ( i.e physicans, surgeons, pain clinics, etc ). The myth is that these types of referral makers do not use social media. Not true at all! They are there in full force looking to connect and create lasting relationships like you and me. So why not connect with these people on social media and offer ways to help improve their patient outcomes. Maybe you can provide an educational inservice at their office for their patients. The goal here is to connect and build a relationship first. Then offer to do something for them initially before asking for the referral.

4. Provide useful and valuable content specifically for your social community and ask them to kindly share your content with others. Articles and video that you create or that you find online that is useful to the community are great ways to build value in your community.

Using these social media tactics consistently will have people wanting to know more about you. This behavior typically drives people to your website to learn more about you. It has happened to me many times on all of the social media sites I use and is probably one of my best targeted traffic referral source.

Paid Advertising

Pay Per Click or PPC advertising is one of the common methods of advertising a product, company or website. This can also bring a lot of traffic to your website. The only thing is you have to pay for it.

There are some pros and cons when using PPC advertising. I personally like to receive free traffic but eventually you get to a point where you need to reach a wider audience. So paying for traffic is something you should think about as your need to acquire more online traffic grows.

So let’s talk about the pros of using PPC advertising to bring traffic to your website. PPC ads are like turning on the water facet. You pay the service provider and you get traffic almost instantly! Yes, it’s that simple! It’s probably the fastest way to bring traffic to your website almost immediately. A good benefit to PPC ads when setting up your campaigns, you can measure which set of keywords are effective in driving the most amount of converting traffic and then use those same keywords to optimize your website pages as we mentioned earlier.

The cons of using PPC ads include the fact that it can create a hole in your budget if you do not know what you are doing. You have to understand ad copy which is your advertisements verbal or textual content. Another thing is testing multiple ads against each other to see which ads are converting winners and which are the losers. It is a process that if you don’t know much about is best left for someone that does. If you are daring enough to try you can always start off with a small budget to play around with and learn as you go.

If you decide to try PPC Ads to drive traffic here are some places to start:

1. Facebook Ads

2. Google Ads

3. Yahoo and Bing Ads

4. Local Sponsorship Banner Ads. These can be websites that have a local presence in your area and offer banner placement on their website.

I will be providing more blog content on PPC ads in the future. I know it is an area that can seem intimidating but I feel you should have some working knowledge about how it all works.

Offline Marketing Tools

Traditional offline marketing tools are also effective in driving traffic to your website. Some marketers kind of moved away from this type of marketing because of all the hype with the internet and social media. However offline tools can still prove to be very much effective in driving website traffic and increasing the exposure of your physical therapy clinic or ceu course.

Below are some effective offline tools you should remember to stick your website url on to get people to come back and visit you online:

1. Post Cards

2. Business Cards

3. Company Letter Heads

4. Brochures

5. Envelopes

6. Company Voicemails. A simple line that states “you can always reach us through our website” is often effective.

So those were the 5 ways you can drive traffic to your physical therapy website. I go more in depth and explain in detail how to do all 5 traffic generating techniques in the PT Marketing Academy. I would advise you to take a look at if you want to learn more about marketing your physical therapy business.

Don’t feel like you have to do all of these things at once to start driving traffic to your site. I’ll admit that it can be a bit overwhelming and an uphill climb to conquer if you are not familiar with how to drive traffic to a website. I would like to encourage you though to take action on one of these traffic generating techniques. Focus on one for now so that you can start building a steady stream of targeted potential referrals for your PT practice or attendees for your PT ceu course.

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How To Add A Picture ( Gravatar ) To Your Physical Therapy Blog Comments

Samuel — Fri, 13 May 2011 15:33:09 +0000

Are You Using A Picture ( Gravatar) To Brand Your Blog Comments?

I have seen a lot of empty images where a real picture should be on many of the comments left on physical therapy blogs I have visited. So I thought I would share a tutorial that will show you and other physical therapists how to add a picture or gravatar to their blog comments.

Either when commenting on your blog or other blogs, I feel it is important to let others in the virtual community see a picture of you or your company brand so they can identify and connect with your comments.

Below I have a video that briefly explains the benefits of having a Gravatar and why you should start implementing them when you comment on blogs other than your own.

Now below are some screenshots that will show you how to set this up step by step. Click on the images to see a larger shot on your screen. Just follow the detailed steps below and you will be on your way to branding your blog comments with your own Gravatar.

Step 1. Visit the Gravatar.com website and sign up at the top left-hand corner.

Step 2. Sign up to begin creating your Gravatar image.

Step 3. Select “add an email” in the my account menu. This email address will be connected to the image you select later on.

Step 4. Once you confirm your email account with the Gravatar website it will be time to select your Gravatar image. Go to my account menu and select add image. Choose where you’d like to get the image from.

Step 5. Most of your images will already be on your computer. So select a file from your computer to get your image.

Step 6. Crop your image and select finish.

Step 7. Choose a rating for your Gravatar image.

Step 8. Next you want to confirm this is the image you want to use for your Gravatar.

Step 9. Select an email address to connect with your Gravatar image.

Step 10. Congratulations! Your email address is now connected to your Gravatar image. You can begin blog commenting and have everyone see your Gravatar image.

That’s pretty much it for creating your own Gravatar image. You can now comment on other physical therapy related blogs and start branding your new Gravatar image.

Once you have completed these steps, show off your new Gravatar image to me by leaving a comment below.

Also I would be grateful if you can help me spread this post around on Twitter, Facebook or any other social network you use so that others can learn how to create Gravatars of their own.Similar Posts:

Podcast: A Behind The Scenes Look At A New Online Patient Management And Tracking System By Force Therapuetics

Samuel — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 21:34:57 +0000

Bronwyn Spira is a physical therapist practicing in a general outpatient setting in New York. She founded a company called “Force Therapeutics” which develops comprehensive patient management and tracking systems designed for physical therapists.

I approached Bronwyn late last year to share and uncover her latest ground breaking technology that will change how PT’s track and manage patient home exercise programs.

Show Notes:

Bronwyn shares what encouraged her to start Force Therapeutics and the hurdles she overcame when developing her system.

We learn the benefits to both physical therapists and patients when using Force Therapeutics web-based and mobile technology.

Bronwyn explains how she leveraged social media to connect with physical therapists using Force Therapeutics to get more feedback on her web-based program.

We discuss how web-based and mobile applications will revolutionize how we deliver, manage, and track patient home exercise programs in the 21^st century

Click Here to Download the MP3 [ 29 Minutes - 4.9 MB]

You can demo the patient management and tracking system by Force Therapeutics on their website at www.forcetherapeutics.com . You can also visit them on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ForceTherapeutics and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ForceTherEx

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Podcast: Physical Therapist Monique Serpas Reveals How She Uses Her Blog And Social Media To Connect With Her Patients

Why Online Reviews Matter For Your Physical Therapy Practice

Samuel — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 05:42:22 +0000

Who’s Looking for Your Services Online?

People in need of physical therapy services are searching for a good physical therapist and these days, they’re using nontraditional methods that have proven to be very effective.

More and more often, people are turning to the internet to find physical therapists. They’re using social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, they’re searching on search engines like Google, and they’re looking to see what other people have to say about physical therapists in their local area that catch their attention.

They’ll do so by looking for, and reading, what other patients have to say about the physical therapist they see. If that physical therapist is you, you’ll want to make sure you have tons of raving reviews floating around about the PT services you offer.

Reviews Help Conversions

What will these tons of good reviews do for your PT practice? First of all, they’ll help build immediate trust between you and your potential patient. When a potential patient sees that other patients you’ve helped were very happy with the services you provided, they’ll trust that you can help them too.

This trust is one of the most important factors when it comes to converting potential patients into patients who follow up with you for your services. The more people trust that you can solve their problems, the more likely they’ll be to make that first appointment with you.

Reviews Are Good For SEO ( i.e Google Places, Yahoo Local, etc )

Third party reviews aren’t just good for building trust, they’re also good for SEO or search engine optimization. When your satisfied patients post raving reviews about you on sites like Google Places and Yahoo Local, they’ll use keywords that potential patients might use when searching for a good physical therapist.

The search engines will see the keywords used in these reviews and will use them to bolster your website’s rating in the search engines. This way, when potential patients search for a physical therapist in your local town, your name is more likely to be at the top of the search engine result pages.

Giving Patients A Nudge To Write Reviews

So, now that you know how helpful third party reviews can be, how do you get your patients to write great reviews about you that other potential patients will read? Your patients are busy people so when you ask them to write you a review, make the process as easy as possible.

One of the best ways is to have a card printed with instructions for writing you a review. It can be on the back of the appointment reminder card you give your patient at the end of their session and can say something like, “If you’ve received excellent service, please take a moment to go to (www.name-of-review-website.com) and write a short review.” You’ll also want send them a follow up email or call them on the phone and politely ask if they’ve had a chance to write a short review about the services they’ve received from you.

Promote Your Reviews

Once your patients start writing raving reviews about your physical therapy practice, you’ll want to be sure to promote these reviews on the internet. Doing so will help your rankings in the search engines as well and it will get the word out about you and your practice faster and to even more potential clients and patients.

Sites like Facebook, LinedIn, Twitter, and other social media sites are great places to promote your reviews. When you mention you got a great review from someone, make sure you link to the site where the review is posted so it will be easy for people to click through, read, and then call you to make an appointment.

A Short Review About Reviews

Potential patients are looking for you online. One of the most popular things they’re doing to find the physical therapy services they need is to read what others are saying in the form of third party reviews.

Third party reviews help you build immediate trust and turn potential patients into patients who use your services. Third party reviews will also help increase your ranking in the search engines. So, make it as easy as possible for your patients to write you a review.

Once a patient has written a fabulous review about you, make sure to promote your review through social media websites like Facebook and Twitter. If you haven’t already started harnessing the power of third party reviews to build your physical therapy practice, there’s no time like the present.

If you found this post helpful, please share with others on Facebook and Twitter.Similar Posts:

My Physical Therapy Marketing Predictions For 2011

Samuel — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 15:42:35 +0000

2011 will be a great year for physical therapists in private practice if they go beyond their usual ways of marketing and advertising. When I say “Usual Ways” I’m referring to relying on yellow page ads, newspaper ads, radio advertising and other traditional means of marketing. These mediums are slowly becoming less effective in reaching the audience you want to target. Hopefully in 2010 you were able to avoid some of the physical therapy marketing mistakes that could have prevented you from seeing healthy profits last year in your business.

Moving forward into 2011 as my reader, I don’t want you to become one dimensional in your marketing efforts. An example would be to heavily rely on physician referral marketing as your only marketing strategy. What if the physician that refers to you one day decides to refer to another clinic? Do you have other marketing streams in place you can tap into? Hopefully you see where I am going with this and stick around to see where I want to take you.

In 2010 many physical therapy private practice owners have discovered new ways of marketing to potential patients using the internet. Some have obtained new patient referrals through their website using effective search engine optimization strategies that I teach on this blog. Others have done it using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. One thing is certain is that using the internet as a way to obtain new patients and clients for your private practice will be something you cannot ignore moving forward into 2011.

How you market your physical therapy private practice in 2011 will determine the outcome of your future revenues and your overall profits. So below I have a few marketing predictions I feel will emerge in 2011 and that can position your physical therapy practice to receive some healthy profits in the future.

1. Mobile Marketing – Statistics have shown more people own a mobile phone than they do computers. People use their mobile phones as location devices, to receive text messages, search for local services in their area, and much more. What better way to get in front of your audience then through the device they use everyday! As a private practice owner you can send appointment reminders via text message, mobile coupons for cash based services, and create a mobile version of your website for those seeking out your services locally. This is only scratching the surface! There are a lot of things you can do with mobile devices in terms of marketing that can really help impact the growth of your private practice. More to come on this hot topic in future blog posts!

2. Online Reviews – More users are looking to online review sites like Google Places and Yelp to read what other patients have to say about their physical therapist. This is why it’s important to get your patients to write raving reviews about the PT services you offer. Good reviews written by your current patients will help build immediate trust between you and that potential patient who’s searching for a physical therapist. When a potential patient sees that other patients you’ve helped were very happy with the services you provided, they’ll trust that you can help them too.

3. Better Website Content – It is important that your website have quality content that provides the right information for your patients and to the public. Providing resourceful articles and informative videos helps potential website visitors view you as a trusted source of information and an expert in your field. The information you provide on your website could be a major pivotal point for a local website visitor to pick up the phone and call your office for an appointment.

4. Local Marketing – Optimizing your website for local keyword search terms will be vital to how people find you online. For instance, if your practice focuses on pediatrics and you are based in Marietta Georgia, then you want to make sure your website is optimized for the keyword phrase “Pediatric Physical Therapist in Marietta Georgia”. Placing your website in the local online directories also increases your visibility to the local community about your services.

5. Ebook Style Newsletters and Exercises Sheets – If you haven’t noticed, the sales of the Barnes and Noble Nook Reader and Amazon Kindle were a hot seller this past Christmas. This is a strong indication that users will soon choose these devices to consume books, magazines, and web content. I see plenty of opportunity here for you, the private practice practitioner, to create content like newsletters or exercise sheets for your patients to be viewed on these devices. Why not go with them when they are on the move? Creating content for them to use in these “on the go” devices is a great way to brand your physical therapy practice and stay in front of your existing patients that use your services. You will also get a lot of cool points for being on the cutting edge of technology.

6. Better Strategic Use of Social Media – Social Media is probably one of the best free marketing and advertising tools online you can use to promote your physical therapy services. It is the most simplest and cost effective way to introduce your services to a mass market without squashing your marketing budget for the year. Strategic use of sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter can really help you to reach out to more people and spread the word about your physical therapy services. Just keep in mind it takes time to see a return from using social media. Most of your time will be spent building relationships and providing value to your existing patients and those who inquire about your services. If you view it more as a communication tool vs a sales tool then you will have better expectations about the time spent using it and the returns it can provide to your private practice in the future.

Those are my marketing predictions for 2011. I will expand more on some of these topics in future blog posts. If you have any predictions of your own or want to share what your physical therapy business will be doing different this year, please share your comments below. Would love to hear from you!

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The Advantages Of Listing Your Physical Therapy Practice With Online Business Directories

Samuel — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:39:42 +0000

Are you still using the Yellow Pages to promote your physical therapy clinic or private practice? It is a known fact that physical therapy clinics and private practices have been listing their services in the Yellow Pages business directory for decades now. But very few people use the Yellow Pages these days. Now everyone Googles the things they are looking for or need. So it is safe to say now the majority of search for services take place online. That’s why in previous blog posts I have stressed the importance of creating an online presence for your physical therapy business.

Having an online presence and listing your physical therapy business in online directories should be considered part of your physical therapy marketing strategy. It is a natural movement to a medium that is more relevant today and what majority of people are using.

I will outline some of my top reasons why you should list your physical therapy business in an online directory:

1. Exposure on search engines: Most people use Google to search for services and very often if you are searching for something local, Google shows the local listings as part of the results ( see image example on left ). If you list on Google Places, then your listings will be shown if Google thinks they are relevant to what the user is searching. I took Google’s example, but this will work with any search engine. Listing your services in a business directory increases your chances of putting yourself in front of potential patient referrals or clients for your PT practice.

2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) benefits: Listing on directories gives you valuable links back to your business and increases your online presence. This will help boost your website search engine rankings. There is also a greater chance of your business appearing on search engine result pages because most online directories are viewed as high authority sites in the eyes of the search engines.

3. Inexpensive: Listing on online business directories is quite inexpensive and in some cases it is absolutely free. So there is every reason to get your business listed in these directories today. There are not to many free advertising mediums that can offer a good return like online business listings. Can you think of any?

4. User reviews: There are a few directories that let users review your business based on their experiences with you. This can be a really great asset for someone who has built a good reputation and has people willing to write reviews for them. I know when I am searching for a service and come across a few business listings, I look at the reviews to see what feedback people have left. It has a tremendous impact on deciding whether or not to use the service I am reviewing.

So when you create a listing, you want to get a few people to write reviews for you. In time you will have a number of reviews for your physical therapy business for users to look through. If you have several reviews on your business listing it naturally attracts people to your listing because it shows social proof of others experience with your physical therapy clinic or private practice.

Now that I’ve told you some benefits of listing on a online business directory, let me list some you can get started creating your physical therapy business listing with today.

1. Google Places
2. Yahoo Local
3. Bing Local
4. Yelp
5. Yellow Pages
6. City Search
7. Ask City Business Listings

I don’t want to overwhelm you, so I’ll leave you with just 7 top directories. There are many more that you can take advantage of once you are done listing your business in the ones above.

So my advice would be to devote an hour or two a day to create a listing for your physical therapy practice or clinic. Then you can reap the benefits of your business listing for a long time to come.

If you have some thoughts or suggestions on online business listings that have worked well for you, please share them with the rest of the readers here in the comments below.

If you found this post helpful in any way, please help me to re-tweet to your Twitter followers or share with your friends and colleaues on Facebook. Many thanks!Similar Posts:

Physical Therapy Marketing Ideas That Will Drive Traffic To Your Website

Samuel — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 23:07:56 +0000

Here is a video I did using a whiteboard to explain a few traffic generation techniques you can use to drive traffic to your physical therapy website. Just remember these techniques only work if you take consistent action and begin implementing them.

Please let me know if you find this helpful in the comments section below.

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