2018-06-15
Top 4 Mistakes When Marketing Your Physical Therapy Website

Brainstorming your marketing strategy

We all know that we need to market our businesses but if you are new to marketing you might not know where to start. There are plenty of ways you promote your Physical Therapy website but there are also some mistakes to make too. If you know the mistakes to avoid before you start, then you are already a step ahead in the marketing game. You may already know what direction you want to take your business in, but there are some ways of promoting your website that are more effective than others. Here are the top 4 mistakes you could make when marketing your Physical Therapy website. 

1.         Marketing to everyone

Not everyone will be interested in your business, so you will be wasting your time marketing to these groups that won’t give your business a second look. So you shouldn’t market to them. You need to identify your target audience for your Physical Therapy website. Marketing to everyone is a big mistake that many businesses make when they first start to promote their website. However, finding the right audience is an extremely important part of your marketing plan. 

Remember your website wont market itself. It’s not as simple as creating your website and waiting for your visitors to arrive. If you don’t show your potential customers where you are then how will they find you? Some tips to make sure you are marketing to the right crowd include:

  • Looking at the demographics of your current customer base. Or if you don’t have this, then look at your competitor’s customers.
  • Concentrate on the specific locations of your clinic or services.
  • Think about who will use your services the most when your business grows.

If you don’t market to a specific audience, you are wasting both your time and money. You need focus on those customers that your content and services are relevant to them. That way you are more likely to generate leads and convert those leads to sales or appointment bookings.

2.         Only using paid advertising

There are more ways to market your Physical Therapy business than you may have originally thought. You don’t always have to pay for your marketing for it to be effective. The main point is to get your Physical Therapy brand out there and recognised. Of course, paid advertising does work but here are a few other ways you can market your website to the potential customers you would most like to reach.

Back links in appropriate blog posts

To get your website seen in as many places as possible, reaching out to relevant boggers is an excellent idea. Create great content which will be interesting and relevant to your business and share those posts with bloggers in your niche. Include back links to your website and you have some free advertising on a related platform. Make sure you explain where the links are going to so the blogger knows exactly what they are sharing, and they can check the links work properly before they post.

Social media marketing  

Never underestimate the power of social media. Sharing on these platforms will get your business noticed where you want it to and to a wide range of people. But to get noticed you must share exciting and intriguing content in the tone of your business. Marketing is not just about promoting links to your website but also getting a good reputation for your brand too. Social media is a great and free way to engage with your customers. Answer your customers questions, make conversations and discuss your services all through your social media platforms.

Sharing your own blog articles

Your Physical Therapy website needs some substance, not just a list of the services you offer. So, writing blog articles and sharing them on other platforms will get your website noticed. Your content must be interesting and educational to your customers. Offer some real advice, good news stories or even personal pieces about your therapists. Give content that your customers and potential new customers will be interested in and create conversation with your followers to keep them coming back.

3.         Not spending time developing a marketing plan

Things are usually better when they are planned, and marketing is no exception. Without a marketing plan you won’t be able to check that you are on track, make changes or evaluate the results of your marketing. A good strategy and having a plan is key to a successful campaign and it is a big mistake to not to spend enough time developing your marketing plan. Starting without knowing where you are going gives you no set agenda and you will end up forgetting where you began.

How to develop a marketing strategy

First you need to look at your business situation and analyse what sets you apart from the competition. Then decide how you would like to describe your Physical Therapy clinic. Next you need to confirm your target audience as touched on above. Once you know who you want to target and how to describe yourself, you need to decide what your marketing goals are.

Make a plan

What do you want to achieve and how will this be measured? What will make you consider the end result a success? Website visits, purchases, bookings or new blog sign ups? What ever it is you want you need a way of measuring the success. Making a plan is essential to an effective marketing campaign and also gives you something to look back on when you are evaluating your success.

Give yourself a time frame

It is much easier to measure your marketing strategy when you give a specific time frame. Leave enough time for the campaign to get off the ground but don’t give it too long for the results to be no longer relevant. Overall your target needs to be achievable and measurable within a set time .

4.         Not evaluating your results

There’s no point in spending a long time on a marketing campaign for your Physical Therapy website if you are not going to evaluate your results. If you don’t evaluate you will never know how well your strategy has worked or learn from it for future campaigns.

By now you will know that you should have made a plan, fed your links into the various outlets you have chosen and set a time limit for the whole campaign. Once the time frame has come to an end then what do you do? Well, you need to measure the success. Find where the most leads have been generated from and the most popular platforms your leads have come from. Also work out how much this campaign has cost you.

 Knowing how to learn and grow to make the next marketing strategy even better is only found from a good evaluation of your previous results.

The responses of your customers

Another way to evaluate your marketing is the response you have received from both new and existing customers. This may be comments on social media, answers to surveys or perhaps the sharing and feedback on blog posts. The responses of your customers will give you a good indication of how well your campaign has been received.  

What other marketing mistakes are there?

There are other mistakes you could make when beginning your marketing strategy, and some you may not have thought as relevant as they might be. For example, forgetting about local referrals or offering discounts and loyalty bonus’s.

Don’t have unrealistic expectations, you can’t expect record numbers of visitors as soon as your campaign sets off. Being realistic in your goals and expectations is essential to your marketing strategy. You might be told to think big, however you also need to know what is to be expected.

What about the positives?

There are many positive reasons you should market your Physical Therapy website from boosting your site visits to attracting new bookings. Promoting your business online is one of the most effective ways to reach your target audiences and if effective whether that’s organic or paid results.

The main positive effects of marketing are:

  • Improving the reputation and visibility of your brand. Sharing your brand across different platforms will get you noticed and improve your credibility especially if promoted by reputable bloggers or businesses.
  • Making and maintaining good relationships with your customers and creating loyalty and trust amongst your customer base.
  • Generating relevant traffic to your website and increasing your followers and shares which in turn creates more leads.

As you can see there are many great positives to marketing your business website, so it is definitely something you should be doing.

Do you know how to avoid mistakes when marketing your Physical Therapy website?

The key really is in the planning and hopefully these four top mistakes to avoid will help you never to make the same mistakes. You need to think about your strategy, plan your campaign and then analyse the results.

It might sound like a lot of hard work, but you are not alone. At Patientsites.com, we can help you with marketing your Physical Therapy website offering different plans to suit your needs. So, if you want to concentrate on other aspects of your business you know you can get your marketing sorted if you need it.

Image from pixabay.com

Do you want to take your physical therapy marketing to the next level? Download our Free Evergreen Marketing Blueprint for Physical Therapists and start creating long-term assets that generate new patient bookings for years to come.