There are so many different techniques that can be used to market a physical therapy practice, but it makes sense to focus on your best assets. If you are to make good use of such assets then you need to know what they are and how to use them. Discovering your biggest asset is actually very easy because for nearly every physical therapy clinic in existence, their biggest asset in terms of marketing is always going to be their patients – or more accurately their repeat patients! Let's look at why that is.
Every physical therapist has a small handful of repeat patients who they know are going to book an appointment a couple of times a year. However, what most of these therapists fail to realise is that these patients could be one of the biggest assets that they have when it comes to promoting the clinic and attracting new patients. If you take a closer look at your patient list, you are more than likely going to find several people on there who have a connection to one of your repeat patients. They could be friends, relatives, co-workers or have some other connection to your regulars. This means that not only have you provided your patient with such good treatment that you have become their go to physical therapist, but they are also recommending you to everyone they know.
While your repeat patients are probably already recommending you to people in their circle without being asked, there are still a number of ways that you can harness the marketing power of these patients! One of the basic things that most physiotherapists are probably already doing is handing out promotional t-shirts. Your patients are likely to use these at the gym turning themselves into a walking billboard for your clinic!
You can also encourage them to put their recommendations in print on review sites like Yelp and Google+, so that even those out-with their immediate circle of friends can see what they have to say about your physical therapy services. It is also great to really try to engage these people on your social media channels as they are likely to be the ones who will share your content helping you to reach out to a wider audience online.
You can probably already name a few of your repeat patients who you know are recommending you, but there are also likely to be others who you do not even realize are singing your praises. So how can you identify them? The easiest way is to issue all patients with a simple survey – even a single question asking if they have ever recommended your services to someone. You can ask this at their next consultation. You will then be able to gather a list of the patients who are recommending people and make sure that they are first to be invited to participate in “refer a friend” promotions or to target for online testimonials. Some practices even maintain a separate email list for preferred patients because they know that they are the ones likely to help marketing the clinic.
Aside from helping you to market your physical therapy clinic effectively, there are also some additional benefits that can be associated with repeat patients. One of them is that they are far more likely to forgiven mistakes or lapses in your usual standards of service. Of course, this does not mean that you should be lax in dealing with these patients, but if something unexpected does happen you can relax knowing that given the previous experiences that they have enjoyed they will be more likely to forgiven these mistakes. Repeat patients are also less resistant to price increases and are also likely to spend more than first time patients so it is well worth taking extra care of them.
With PatientSites, you can make sure that all of your online content is easy for those repeat patients to access and share. We can also make it much easier for you to stay in regular contact with them via email marketing. Why not sign up for a free demonstration today?