Needing help to grow your therapy practice can be daunting at first. Are you looking for new ideas on how to promote and grow your pediatric therapy practice? Whether it’s physical, behavioral, speech, or occupational therapy, we’ve got you covered with our tips below.
You could be looking to grow your pediatric therapy practice for several reasons. You may want to acquire new patients and clients. Or you want your practice to make more money. Maybe you’re looking for strategies to keep your patients. We’ve done our research and found quite a few methods to help you grow and promote your practice.
1 – Your digital presence should be navigable.
Well-designed and easy-to-navigate websites and social media make it easier for users to find what they want. Coupling this with generous amounts of useful and relevant content such as blogs, videos, or other info sources can really highlight your offerings and make it easier for potential patients to digest. This is a common pitfall of practices because if users can’t find what they’re looking for on your website, they will go to a different one. Marketing like this is tricky, but Vitalxchange can help you with this by showing you exactly what you should be highlighting and standardizing it, so you don’t have to worry about it.
2 – Grow your therapy practice with relevant and valuable information
Building off the previous point, a great way to show potential clients value is publicly showing them the information they’re looking for. One of the best ways you can accomplish this is by answering common questions your clients have. Using a platform such as Vitalxchange, you can answer potential clients’ questions and build trust before they even step foot in your office. Since these questions are anonymous and public on the internet, other users will come across your answers and drive more internet traffic toward your practice, which compounds over time.
3 – Patients want to hear about your practice, and they want it to sound like it’s coming from a real person – adopt a people-first mentality instead of solely promoting your practice
People are emotional beings and often make decisions based on emotions. There are a couple of ways to achieve this, but when designing your online presence, you should try to appeal to what the user wants. You can discuss what you do, but more importantly, include why. Following this advice can help you seem more down to earth and build more trust with potential clients.
Outside of the emotional aspect, patients also want to hear about your methods and why they’re unique. You can tie this in with your patient outcomes to show users how your methods are differentiated from your competitors and the value they’re looking for. Some ways you can help differentiate is by looking at what your previous clients have said about you, focusing on what you want your practice to be known for, talking about your strengths as a provider, and simply going back to our first point about emotions and putting yourself in the patient’s shoes – if you were a potential patient of your practice what would you want to know before making a decision?
4 – Try to understand your target audience and the clients who will best fit your services, Look for qualified clients
Every practice’s target audience will be slightly different, but keeping these differences in mind is important because they also play into your practice’s value proposition. This is also important because it helps you focus and concentrate on your growth efforts. For example, one of the highest cost mistakes is concentrating efforts on unqualified leads because it will waste your time and resources. It can be hard to parse qualified from unqualified, but you can adjust your materials to make it clear in your messaging to defer unqualified leads. If you don’t accept certain insurance, but most of your traffic comes from that carrier, you may want to list in your messaging that you don’t support that carrier.
5. – Ask your patients how satisfied they are
There’s no way to know how you’re doing if you don’t have a feedback loop, making it harder to figure out where you should improve your practice. An easy way to do this is by simply sending your patients an anonymous survey after their visit asking how satisfied they are and where you can improve. Being proactive shows you care and can also help reduce the negative reviews you receive on listings like Google. This is because your patients know you’re on it. For positive satisfaction, you can use this as a funnel to write a google review to leverage your patients’ positivity about your practice.
6 – Ask your patients for referrals
When it comes to word of mouth, word has the potential to travel like wildfire. In order to make a fire, though, you need fuel and a spark. If you are doing your job well, the fuel will already be primed, but like anyone, if you want someone to do something, you have to ask them. This is where you come in as the spark. Simply ask your patients for referrals. There’s no harm in asking, and they will be more likely to tell others.
7 – Figure out a way to keep patients engaged by establishing a digital presence
One of the biggest cost centers for budding therapy practices, regardless of your field, is client acquisition cost. Do you pay for referrals, have a marketing budget, or partner with other practices for promotions – whether these costs are explicit or not, they can impact the performance of your business in the short and long term. This is why it’s super important to have a strategy that helps reduce your client churn.
If you have a medium, you can utilize it to keep your patients engaged and keep them from moving to other practices. You can drastically reduce retention costs. For example, if your practice has 1000 yearly patients and 10% churn (meaning you lose 100 patients per year), you have to pay out-of-pocket costs to find new patients. If you pay $100 per patient lead, and only 50% of the leads convert to patients needed to make up the 100-patient difference, you just paid $20,000. If you reduced the patient churn rate to below 5%, you lowered your acquisition cost to $10,000. These costs can stack up fast, and depending on your churn rate and acquisition cost, these costs can look exponential.
8 – Re-engage churned patients
Re-engaging churned patients provides a great avenue to strengthen your practice by getting in touch with your previous patients. Going the extra mile to reach out to them and possibly offer an incentive to come back shows that you care about them and makes them feel valued. In terms of acquisition costs, this can also drastically lower costs because it can take less time and resources to win these patients back.
9 – Expand your services and offerings – potentially branching into new mediums
Interested in starting a blog, website, or other media to increase revenues? There are many great ways to monetize your knowledge, and Vitalxchange knows how to help you. We provide a centralized system where you can manage your current patients, engage new patients and earn extra income by monetizing your industry expertise. We encourage you to click the button below and learn more about how we can help you!
