2018-06-05
How to Identify Your Target Audience for Your Physical Therapy Website 

Physical therapy in action.

When setting up a new Physical Therapy business you have so much to think about when it comes to your tangible business, but you also need to think about your online brand too. Your website is an important tool to get yourself known, improve your brands reputation and most importantly to engage customers. Having a good online presence is essential to a new or expanding business.

When you design and set up your Physical Therapy website you need to have a target audience in mind. Why is identifying a target audience important? If you think about how you communicate day by day, you will change your language and tone depending on who you are speaking to. This is the same with website content. You need to make sure the whole of your website speaks to those groups who are interested and most likely to use your services.

So how do you choose your target audience? There are a few different factors you should consider before you decide on your target audience and that also includes if you want wider or smaller factors to consider in your customer base. You may offer a broad range of services, so you don’t want to filter down your audience too much or you may offer a speciality service that targets a specific group. Here are a few factors you should think about when reviewing your target audience.  

View your current customer base

Start where you know. If you have a current customer base, look at who your customers are. As Physical Therapists you understand that your services are not just for sports injuries and the highly athletic. However, your own clinic may specialise in certain treatments that are more likely to be chosen by a certain demographic.

Your current client base will indicate who your core customers are. Also, you should analyse how often your customers visit. This will show you which demographics you should target who are more likely to become returning customers. You may be able to access this quite easily from your records or you may have to delve a bit deeper, but it is a great place to start.

If you have a very diverse customer base, you can divide them into smaller sections. This way you can address each section as a target or decide which is the most important section to concentrate on.

Analyse your competition

Do some research on your competitors. Looking at other similar businesses will hep you to identify their best-selling services and what they have on offer. This will indicate what type of customer base they have.

Another tip is to check out their social media pages. By looking at the content they offer, the language they use and type of posts they share will help you understand their brand and audience. Staying on social media, have a look at their followers too. This gives a great overall impression of the demographics of your competitions customers.

Once you have analysed your competition, compare this to your own business. Are you similar in what you offer in your Physical Therapy Clinic or do you offer different treatments that actually take you to another area of customers to target? If their demographic fits your own business, you may be able to learn about their target audience for your benefit. If they are very different you can work on your own strengths to target your own niche.

Look at and think about your service

To understand your own business, you need to drill down and look at what you actually offer and what your core services are. Once you have done this you can identify who will want to purchase these services from you and ultimately who to focus your Physical therapy website on. 

Think about what you offer and write a list of all your options if that helps. Then, order the list from the most popular services to the least popular and take into account which services you want to promote. You will then have a record of your services ordered in popularity and priority. Once you have this list you can decide who is most benefitted from each service you offer. This might create a grid you can work from if you are really organised.

For example, if your most popular or most specialised service is for women's health and pelvic floor dysfunction, you can confirm that women within a certain age group may be your target for this service. If you do this with all of your service, you will come out with a list of people who are most likely to use your Physical Therapy Clinic.

Find your specific demographics

What are demographics and which ones will you choose to use in your targeting? So, demographics are a study of a population based on factors such as age and sex. These factors are key to determining a target audience for your Physical Therapy website and your clinic.

If you have a stand alone Physical Therapy clinic in a fixed place, then the location of your audience is a key feature for your targeting. If you want new customers to visit your office, you need to target your website to be reached within the area you are based. This way only relevant customers who will travel to your clinic will be targeted.

Other features include age and gender. You may have gender specific treatments which means you can target males or females for certain services you offer. Age is usually always a factor to consider, as even if you want to target a broad age range of customers you may still want to rule out younger teenagers or other age groups, again, depending on your services. You will know which is most important for your own

Think about the psychographics of your target audience

After considering the demographics you will use in your audience targeting, you should think about the psychographics too. What are these you might ask? Psychographics are more personal attributes your customer will have, including such things as personality types and lifestyles.

Think about what your customers are interested in and how they gain information they are looking for. Is this on social media? Online or other forums? Knowing how your customers think is an essential when it comes to creating your target audience but also making your website relevant and engaging for those who visit.

For example, if you are a Physical Therapy clinic that specialises in sports injuries, then the ideal psychographic will be those customers with an active athletic lifestyle. However, if you offer many alternative treatments you may wish to target those who are interested in homeopathic and alterative therapies. 

Evaluate!

Once you have looked at all of these areas and picked out some key points for your target audience you need to evaluate your findings. Consider if there are enough people within your target demographics to fulfil what you are wanting to achieve? Overall you are looking for a good balance of numbers of potential customers who are interested in the services you have to offer. 

Learn from all your research and find the best area to target and grow your business. In the end don’t worry too much about what everyone else is doing. You can learn from their mistakes and build from your own strengths. As long as you can identify the right audience for you and how to market to them you have the answer.

Revisit your target and amend if necessary

Your target audience may change as your business grows and new services become popular. Remember to review your business and website every now and then, or at a set point, to see if you need to amend who you are showcasing your business to. This may be due to having new therapists, offering new services or generally a change in the market.

What else can you consider?

As well as looking at other websites, businesses and blogs for inspiration you could also do some research from within your business. Consider sending out surveys to your existing customers to find out more about them and in turn your customer base, developing what you already have.   

Remember to view your business as its own entity and focus on what you would like it to look like in the future. Knowing your own brand and how you want to present yourself, your website and your services will gain trust from customers and improve your brands reputation with your target audience.

Where will you start when identifying your target audience for your Physical Therapy website?

Knowing your target audience is important for numerous aspects of your website. From language and design to marketing techniques and promotions. Getting your target audience right is essential to moving your business forward.

Finding and developing your target audience can be difficult and time consuming. If you don’t think you have the time or the resources to spend on this arduous task, then you can get help with this and other aspects of your Physical Therapy website. We at Patient sites can arrange many different packages to help get your website off the ground and thriving in the Physical Therapy marketplace. We offer website design, patient education articles, search engine optimisation and much more.

Targeting the right market does not mean that you are excluding some customers, but you are spending your cash and time on the specific markets that are most likely to buy from your brand. So, you are helping the right people to find you, because you are what they are looking for! 

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.

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