4 Content Marketing Essentials For Physical Therapists

We’re pleased to share today’s marketing resource article from Patrick at EcommerceTips.com

4 Content Marketing Essentials For Physical Therapists

As a physical therapist, your primary focus should be providing your patients with the help and care that they need to get to the level of fitness they’re aiming for. But if you don’t spend some of your time on content marketing, how are you going to recruit more clients for your business?

Word of mouth can only get you so far; at some point, you’re going to have to embrace the use of modern business methods. One such tactic which can make a huge difference to your PT business success is content marketing.

It’s important to make time for content marketing; it will strengthen your online presence, generate new interest in your business, and nourish your relationship with existing clients.

We’ve listed four content marketing essentials for any physical therapist with their own business; read on to make sure you’re not missing out.

A strong online presence on social

Creating and maintaining a strong online presence is crucial if you want to expand your business in any way. And the perfect way to do this? Social media, of course!

It’d be remiss of us not to mention social media in any content marketing plan written in 2019. It’s one of the easiest and cheapest ways to drum up interest in your business and just get your name out there, as well as engaging with your patients.

Stick to a select few social platforms when you are creating business profiles or pages; three is a good number. You’re probably already pressed for time running your own practice, and you don’t want to spend too many hours on social media when you could be setting up appointments with clients or pushing your business in some other way.

As a small, local business, we’d suggest Facebook and Instagram (as a minimum) are the way to go. These are both far-reaching platforms that are perfect for interacting with your online communities, and you can play to the strengths of each platform; putting up more visual content on Instagram, and posting longer-form content on Facebook.

Post regularly, and making sure that your posts are relevant to your customers, as well as informative and engaging. You should also interact with your audience — responding to comments or questions with your friendly answers.

If you’re feeling daunted by the amount of work that running multiple social media pages entails, remember that you can always use a scheduling tool like Loomly. These tools will help you prepare posts in advance and set an optimized time for posting, so you don’t have to worry about being on your phone all of the time.

A professional-looking clinic website

Of course, creating a strong social media presence won’t count for much if you don’t have a good-looking website where prospects can find out more about your clinic and your services.

Many physical therapists have established good businesses without a website in the past, but competition is increasing and the easier it is for the customer to find and employ you, the better.

If you’re worried about setting up your own website, don’t be. It’s simple enough to create your own site with a range of functionalities using a site builder like WordPress, or even a store builder like Shopify if you’re planning on selling products or sessions directly from your website. Squarespace is another popular option for less tech-savvy individuals as it’s got a simple drag-and-drop backend and can be easily upgraded to ecommerce too.

Website builders give you the opportunity to really strengthen your brand image and advertise your services — and products if you sell them — in a way that looks attractive and professional to prospective patients.

You don’t have to make it complicated; visitors want to be able to navigate your pages easily and find the information they are looking for, whether it’s your contact details or patient testimonials (more on those later).

You should also stay away from overcrowding pages with too many distracting ads, images or “wacky” gifs. Keep it simple; it’s best to stick to a similar color theme and aesthetics throughout your site for continuity. This makes your business look much more legitimate; anything less will appear messy and unprofessional.

A physical therapy blog

Blogging should be a crucial element of your content marketing strategy. It’s easy enough to incorporate it into your main site, and it’s also extremely powerful.

You should aim to update your blog regularly. Not only will this make your website more appealing to customers — who will visit for news, advice and updates — but it will also make your site more attractive in SEO terms. This is because Google will recognize that your site is regularly updated with new content and pages, and will bump you up search results.

Writing new posts also gives you the opportunity to incorporate keywords to do with physical therapy — again, making your clinic site more appealing in search.

Once you’ve written your blog post, make sure that you promote it on social media. By sharing on easily-accessible platforms, you’re reaching both your existing readership and potential new clients.

Patient testimonials

Customer testimonials are essential to the growth of your business — whatever type of business you own. It’s how you can signal to prospective customers that you provide a high-quality service that has had a really positive impact on your existing clients.

Customer reviews and testimonials have been proven time and time again to be one of the most effective marketing methods out there. They’re hugely successful when it comes to influencing opinions and converting leads because they build trust, credibility and give prospects an indication of what to expect from you.

Including patient testimonials in your content marketing plan is easy enough. Just ask some of your loyal patients to say a few words about your practice, and their experiences with you.

Once you’ve got some sincere, strong testimonials you can add them to your website. Make sure you feature them somewhere prominent, where visitors can quickly and easily see them and take note.

As a physical therapist, it’s important to tick all the boxes with your content marketing. The key aim is to appeal to potential patients, and the best ways to do this are using these four essentials.

Of course, there are other content marketing features and methods that you can use, but the ones above will provide you with a solid foundation upon which to build your physical therapist business online. Get started and good luck!