PT Classroom - Marketing Your Physical Therapy Clinic Website ׀ by Chai Rasavong, MPT, MBA

Marketing Your Physical Therapy Clinic Website

You have put a lot of hard work into starting and growing your physical therapy practice. You have carefully analyzed and researched your target audience. You have developed marketing initiatives and strategies to attract and capture that target audience. You have educated healthcare providers and the community on the benefits of your services, developed relationships with a multitude of potential referral sources, conducted educational programs for both health care providers & the community, participated in community activities & events, participated in networking events, joined your local chamber of commerce, purchased print advertising, media advertising, or internet advertising. You have put a lot of hard work into continuously marketing and evaluating your business and developing your reputation, but is there more that you can do?
 

One aspect of marketing which I believe is currently underutilized by many physical therapy practices is the use of the internet and a website to help market their practices. According to internetworldstats.com approximately 74.1 % of the US population utilized the internet in 2009 (1). For local search results TMP Directional Marketing, the largest local search marketing agency, found that in 2009 the first sources used for a local search are search engines (31%), followed by print Yellow Pages or White Pages (30%), internet Yellow Pages Sites (19%), and local search sites (11%). That is a total of 61% of searches which are online searches and is more than twice the usage of the books! (2).

With this information in mind, one can see why it would be a very good idea to have an online prominence as part of your marketing efforts. Therefore, the first step in helping you strengthen your online prominence is to develop a website if you don’t already have one or to reevaluate your current website. Your website should be user friendly, appealing, have useful and up to date content, have a solid site structure in the background and abides by good search engine optimization practices. Your website is a great way to not only educate potential patients about your practice & services but also affords you the opportunity to distinguish yourself among competitors.

Despite having a great website, that is not a guarantee that you will be able to attract visitors to your site. There are various strategies which can help your site get noticed and generate traffic to your site. Content is the foundation to having your site listed in search engine results. Sites which provide content which are not only useful to visitors but are rich in keywords will convey to search engines that your site is worthy of ranking, and that your site provides value to its visitors.

With a website in place, you can now take steps to strengthen your online prominence. There are various websites where you can list information about your practice for free. Not only can you include your general business information in the listing but you can also include a link to your website as well. A few of these websites include: Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Bing Maps, CyberPT, YellowPages.com, Yelp, etc. By having your practice listed in as many directories as you can with a link to your site, you not only strengthen your online prominence but you strengthen your "link popularity" and search engine optimization results as well.

Your site's ranking in Google and other search engines are partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you or “link popularity” (3). Having more links to your site is not a guarantee of higher search engine results. This is because Google and other search engines also examine the quantity, quality, and relevance of links when determining your rating. The sites that link to your site which are trusted and popular will help your site rank higher than links from lower traffic sites. A good way to obtain links to your site is to create a links page on your site and contact other sites which are similar and relevant to your site and request a link exchange. This is a great way to help build your link popularity. Click here for an example of a links page: CyberPT links in

Another great way to increase exposure and generate traffic to your website is to write articles in your area of expertise and submit them for use as a publication online or for electronic newsletters. With your submission, simply request that they include a link to your website with the article. This will not only help with further developing your reputation as an expert in your area, but assist with strengthening your online prominence and increasing links to your site as well. A few of these sites which allows for submission of articles are Ezine Articles, Article City, GoArticles.com, and CyberPT.
 

Lastly, you should consider participating in social media. There are basically four types of social media: 1) social networking sites (ie. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) 2) blogs 3) forums and 4) social bookmarking sites. Participation in social media continues to grow and is becoming ever more popular. In fact on 2/17/10, a web analytics firm, Compete.com, revealed that there has been a major shift at the top of the web charts: Facebook is now larger than Yahoo in the U.S. (4). Participation in social media is simple and can be an effective way to not only promote awareness of your business but further assist with sending direct traffic to your site and producing links to your site. It is an excellent way to allow the individuals you interact with the ability to get to know you better and for them to stay up to date on the latest news and developments with your practice.

Hopefully, by implementing some or all of the above strategies above, you will be able to strengthen your online presence and be able to generate more referrals for your physical therapy practice. Maintaining and increasing your online presence will not be easy and will require a continuous effort on your part as competition is fierce. However, with dedication and hard work it can pay off big in the long term.

Last revised: March 11, 2010
by Chai Rasavong, MPT, MBA

References
1) http://www.internetworldstats.com/top20.htm
2) http://www.tmpdm.com/press/2009/tmpdm-study-reveals-local-search-changing.asp
3) http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34432
4) http://mashable.com/2010/02/17/facebook-unseats-yahoo/