Now that you have your physical therapy practice set up, do you have a plan to attract clients that need your help and build a successful practice? Developing a strategic marketing plan is the first step to growing your practice. The challenge for most therapists engaged in the practice of healing and helping people, is deciding how to approach a strategic plan and what to include. Physical therapy marketing, like any small business marketing should focus on finding a niche that fulfills a customer need while providing quality therapy, controlling the growth of your practice, and maintaining high customer satisfaction. Naturally then, the first step in approaching a physical therapy marketing plan is to target a specific audience whose needs your services can fulfill and they will benefit from. Here are some basics for developing a marketing plan for your new practice.
Conducting Market Research
Conducting market research will help you decide which direction to focus your services and who to target.
* Find out what potential clients want in a particular demographic or locale. Talk to doctors who refer physical therapists to their patients. When you determine a targeted clientele, determine what prevents them from enjoying life fully, where they go for help, and how you can fill their needs.
* Research your competition by looking at how they market their services. Conduct a comparison analysis of your clinic and services to theirs. Is there a client need that your services fulfill that others do not? Is your area of expertise is already saturated? Informal observations of and interaction with competitors in your locale can also reveal telling information about effective marketing strategies and customers' needs, and where to focus your physical therapy marketing plan.
* Keep up to date with economic, political and marketing trends that impact the medical community so you can maintain a proactive marketing strategy that responds to changing market conditions and practices, and optimizes opportunities in the marketplace.
Initial market research is valuable for developing a strategic physical therapy marketing plan, and this type of research should be an ongoing process.
Now that you have targeted specific customer segments and locales, and know the trends in your industry and the strategies of your competition, it is time to design an integrated marketing plan based on your solid research.
Develop an Integrated Marketing Plan
An integrated marketing plan includes four components: services, price, promotion and distribution. As you develop your plan, consider each element of the mix and how it will function to contribute to the overall goal of the plan.
Identify your services:
Your services should be highly specialized and target a specific geographic or customer segment. When promoting your services, emphasize the benefits they provide, rather than the techniques used - sell a good nights sleep rather than a particular type of massage therapy used.
Price:
Keep your prices competitive and offer packages. Where does your pricing need to be to turn a profit while controlling growth? In the physical therapy practice, it is best to focus your prices on patient goals rather than individual treatments. So you should be promoting packages to clients that solves their problems and helps them reach their goals quicker.
Promotion:
For small practices, traditional marketing campaigns that include brochures, radio, TV, newspaper and magazine advertising can be too costly. But before any purchase a customer must have awareness of your business, and interest in your service, thus promotion is still vital to your success. Here are some avenues to consider integrating into your plan for creating awareness of your services and generating interest:
* A couple strategically placed print ads and brochures reaching a target audience can be more effective than a general media sweep. Seek out venues that promote healthy and physical lifestyles such recreation centers, gyms, and health food stores.
* Social media such as Facebook and Twitter are free networking tools that can reach infinite potential customers in real time, which gives you the advantage of creating and maintaining relevancy for your practice.
* An Internet presence is an essential marketing tool for a physical therapy practice. Promoting your services through a website, newsletters and blogs will make your practice more visible to the many customers who look to the Internet for information.
Your marketing plan should be a working blueprint for how your clinic initially conveys its brand, reaches and helps a community of customers, and evolves as a profitable business.
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