There are a lot of PTs talking about marketing on LinkedIn and Twitter (in fact, you should check out #bizPT, if you haven’t already), but it can still be difficult to really grasp a new marketing strategy and apply it directly to your clinic. To help you narrow things down, we’ve compiled the top physical therapy marketing resources from leaders in our industry. Every blog, guide, podcast, and webinar on this list provides actionable strategies that you’ll be able to implement in your clinic today to improve your marketing return on investment (ROI).
1. Private Practice Section (PPS) of the APTA
There are only a few resources on this list that you’ll have to pay for—and we’ve only included them if the quality was clearly worth the cost. These PPS resources are examples of that. I you’re not already a member of the APTA, you should join and attend the PPS Annual Conference (this year it’s in Colorado Springs). The environment at this conference is electric every year, and most of the people featured on this list will be in attendance. If you can’t make it to the conference, then check out the PPS How-To Manual for Opening a Private Practice. If you scroll down the page, you’ll see that powerhouses in our profession (e.g., Tannus Quatre, Eric Robertson, and Lynn Steffes) have all written chapters, so you know this is a high-quality resource.
2. Healthy Wealthy Smart (HWS) Podcast with Jerry Durham and Larry Benz.
The HWS podcast with Karen Litzy is excellent, and this particular episode features two great physical therapy business minds talking about what they’ve personally done to grow thriving practices. If you find this podcast valuable and want to dive deeper, consider signing up for Karen’s Strictly Business Virtual Conference, where you can learn from the experts about how to create and build your PT practice.
3. WebPT Webinar: Top of Mind, Top of Search: 4 Ways to Help Patients Find Your PT Practice Online
We all know that marketing our practices online is crucial, but not many PTs understand how to improve their findability—and reputation—online. And those two factors are intricately tied to revenue. When you’re done with the webinar, check out all of the great marketing blog posts and other webinars we have to offer.
4. Ben Fung: Developing a Marketing Plan
With both a DPT and an MBA, Fung knows all about marketing for a physical therapy practice. In this guide, he outlines how to create a marketing plan that will set your clinic up for success.
5. Rehab Management Podcast with Sturdy McKee: How to Get More Referrals
McKee is the CEO of San Francisco Sport and Spine PT—and the epitome of a PT-entrepreneur. In this podcast, he talks through the value of each referral and how to get more patients. He goes beyond the usual strategies and talks about how managing your patient’s experience after the referral (i.e., patient-relationship management) can lead to more patients.
6. Erson Religioso: How to Effectively Market a Niche Service
Written a few years back, Religioso’s post is short, sweet, and to the point. He lays out exactly how he built a steady stream of referrals for patients with temporomandibular dysfunction (TMD). Even if you don’t treat patients with TMD, the key takeaway here is that specializing in a given area and asking other providers for referrals just isn’t enough. Instead, you must gain an understanding of your market, target effectively, and show value to these referral sources in order to demonstrate your expertise. Religioso provides a simple blueprint that you can follow to execute on something similar.
7. Jarod Carter: How to use Blogging to Grow a PT Practice
For many clinic owners, creating and maintaining a blog may seem like a big time-spend with questionable ROI. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. In this post, Carter makes a compelling case for starting a blog for your practice. He delves into the true ROI of blogging and gives tips for creating the kind of content that drives business.
8. David Browder: What is Quality in Physical Therapy?
According to Browder, quality care is the combination of positive outcomes, patient experience, and the patient-provider relationship. To quantify the patient experience at Texas Physical Therapy Associates, Browder uses Net Promoter Score® (NPS®) tracking—among other things—which is something we’re big proponents of. As we always preach, a raving fan is your biggest marketing collateral, and taking the steps Browder lays out will undoubtedly help increase your number of raving fans and word-of-mouth referrals.
9. Stellar Example: Champion Physical Therapy and Performance
Many physical therapy practices try to fit every single thing they can on their website’s homepage, including every service they provide and every injury type they treat. Unfortunately, those websites appear cluttered, are difficult to navigate, and don’t have simple and compelling messaging. If you want a real-life example of how to keep your messaging simple—and back it up with social proof via testimonials—then check out Champion PT: the website is beautifully designed and simple, and all of the messaging is concise, consistent, and well-supported.
If you have your own great PT-specific marketing resources to add to this list, share them in the comment section below, and we may just include them the next time we update this post.
