Crafting the perfect ad for your physical therapy practice takes patience, understanding and creativity. The systems in place to generate ad campaigns aren't difficult, but they require some prerequisite knowledge. The ads themselves are becoming more demanding as physical therapy clinics flex their creative muscles with sparkling newsletters, beautiful banner ads, seductive search engine marketing, and innovative print advertisements.So how can you keep up with trends and stay on top of your marketing game? We're going to touch on the most effective ads for your physical therapy practice in 2020 and give you insight on how to achieve the best returns on your investment and substantial patient outreach.
Writing digital advertisements for your physical therapy practice is essential. Digital advertisements are not only targeted, but they provide flexibility across channels. Not to mention the added benefit of picking and choosing which work best in your overall campaign strategy. Digital advertisements are generally faster to market than any other form and can be analyzed to calculate impact, productivity and returns on investment.
Practice owners with a Google Ads account and physical therapy industry knowledge are ready to begin releasing digital advertisements. Sign in or create a Google Ads account to start a new campaign. Like most forms of digital marketing, you're going to set campaign goals in the beginning to declare intent. Next, you'll select either "display" or "search" as your campaign type. The difference between these two will be whether you're paying per click (PPC) on search engine results or paying for banner or display ads. Here are a few differences between the two most widely used forms of advertisement amongst physical therapists.
One of the most efficient ways to capitalize on search engine marketing is using pay per click (PPC) advertising. PPC advertising on search engines is exactly how it sounds—it allows you to put an ad at the very top of the Google search results and only pay if someone clicks on the advertisement. By reserving a space at the top of Google search, you can generate serious traffic to your website, generate leads, and find new patients. People are already searching for physical therapy on the internet, so how can you take advantage of their demand?
Focus on creating ads based on patients' frequently asked questions, demographic, and the most prevalent therapy styles. Use offline feedback to pinpoint your specific clientele's needs. If ten people last month came in for neck pain, that could be a stellar keyword to advertise. Additionally, you should keep tabs on your competition and use a competitor PPC keyword research tool for diving deep into their market. The idea is to compete for the market share of search terms but also advertise keywords that are unique to your practice.
Begin by using minimal targeting so that you can learn pertinent information about your patients. Analyzing the campaign data can provide surprising insights. These insights contain specific audiences who convert more easily. Once you've figured out who's picking up the phone and calling your office, you can target them in your ad campaigns.
Marketing specialists will be the first to tell you about the gracious returns on your investment when creating digital advertisements for your physical therapy clinic. What people don't tell you is that you shouldn't advertise for too many keywords. Getting clicks for off-brand keywords will deplete your budget quickly with a shallow amount of phone calls to show for it. Another way to optimize spending on PPC campaigns is to use Dayparting—or scheduling your ads for optimal timeslots to provide more click opportunities for your ads. Using these tactics with a healthy budget can not only generate leads but genuinely offer a return on your marketing investment.
Display ads are like digital billboards that can take the shape of text, image, and video. Instead of buying expensive real estate such as SEM PPC marketing, display ads utilize the space on actual websites and email inboxes that tend to be less pricey. However, don't let the price tag fool you; display ads can be very cost-effective with their ability to target both general and highly-specific audiences.
The beauty of display ads is the ability to dig into the target audience. Google Ads provides some powerful features that make display ads efficient. Physical therapy practice owners can place display ads on different websites relating to physical therapy, cater ads to users who search for physical therapy related terms, or even put an ad directly in front of someone who already visited their website. By use of retargeting—or placing an ad in front of someone who has viewed your practice's website—you can build brand familiarity and entice prospective patients.
Another form of display ads is Gmail advertisements. From the Google Ads dashboard, you can create an ad campaign that displays in users' Gmail accounts. Gmail ads are customizable and show up right in targeted inboxes. Ads should showcase persuasive copywriting, imagery and videos. Successful campaigns typically include something of value to patients, such as a free physical therapy consultation.
Advertising on social media might be foreign to some, but it's an incredibly effective way to get the point across. Social media platforms that work best for physical therapy marketing campaigns depend on the determined demographic. So which platforms are downright popular? According to the Pew Research Center, 69% of adults use Facebook. The next highest platform, Instagram, sees a total of 39% of adults. Luckily enough, through Facebook advertisements, you can target both of these platforms at once.
Creating an ad on Facebook starts with laying down the foundation. Physical therapy clinics need a Facebook business page, where they engage with current and prospective clients. It should help to answer questions while showcasing relevant content in the form of posts, pictures, and videos. Once established, you can dive into the fun part—building a campaign. Facebook Ad Manager allows you to set up a new campaign, track your performance, manage budgeting preferences, and much more. Each campaign starts with an objective, which is typically the desired result. Set an objective, such as getting more patients or building brand awareness. Some business owners will market multiple ad campaigns with different objectives. Next, you'll select demographic and targeting information that will determine the audience and outreach for each campaign. Be selective when setting boundaries for your practice (unless you're a traveling physical therapist).Finally, you can select ad placement. Facebook offers automatic placements, which is a solid idea for a first-timer. Once the data rolls in, you can tweak and customize future campaigns using custom ad placement.
You can select a daily budget, which will set a spending threshold per day or a lifetime budget—which Facebook will automatically try and spend each day the ad is live. And you guessed it, the more money you spend, the more significant your audience. You can switch up your budget to see the effects on the potential outreach, which is the number of impressions created by your ad.
Using photos, videos and compelling copywriting, you'll establish the visuals and call to action. Be creative, and keep in mind the targeted audience selected earlier. Designing an ad is the final step before you launch your message to the world. Once started, you'll be able to revise the targeting and campaign details; it's a good idea to let an ad run for at least three days so it can fully optimize itself and gather enough data.
After an ad has run, you can view data such as link clicks, impressions, spending amounts and much more. This data is invaluable to unveiling your next successful marketing campaign via Facebook. Analyze the details, refine the ad, and allocate a new budget for success.
A fantastic way to increase outreach is to set up an email marketing campaign. These campaigns typically run through popular applications such as Mailchimp or Hubspot and can be integrated right into your website. The idea is to build up a subscriber list by using tools such as physical therapy blog posts or informational newsletters that offer value to current and prospective patients. Some companies offer their services free of charge or for very little money. Research multiple email marketing companies to find the best fit for your goals and budget.
Adherence to HIPAA guidelines is crucial. Digital advertisements allow most forms of media—making compliance difficult without proper guidance. Here are some common HIPAA violations that occur in physical therapy marketing:
Also, marketing companies shouldn't have access to any protected health information (PHI). It should be secure from data breaches, leaks, and unwanted disclosures.
Paper advertisements are still relevant and an excellent way to add a personal marketing touch in the local community. By utilizing mailers, flyers, postcards, posters and the newspaper, physical therapists can build momentum on an existing ad campaign. Print ads are carried out by business owners reaching out to their local paper for listing information, heading to the print shop for flyers and business cards, or even sending direct mail advertisements through USPS. While some of these options seem outdated, the idea is to grab every piece of the market possible. An appealing offer for physical therapy directly to patients' mailbox could create a patient for life.
Talk about leaving no stone unturned. Faxing advertisements are still alive even after the federal government placed restrictions with The Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The law prohibits businesses from using the fax machine for advertising products and services. However, if your physical therapy office has a relationship with the party receiving the fax or an "existing business relationship," it's quite alright to send over an offer they can't refuse. Just make sure to include a cover sheet with an "opt-out" box so the company can terminate the existing business relationship if necessary.
There are lots of ways to advertise. By trial and error, physical therapy practice owners can pinpoint the most effective ads in 2020 by utilizing a combination of the efforts mentioned above. However, if you want to try some brilliant software that will give you more time to focus on acquiring customers and less time worrying if you're HIPAA compliant or billing your patients correctly, learn more about MWTherapy's physical therapy software.
The PT EMR platform built on automation.
