Direct Access
THE KEY TO CONTROLLING YOUR PRACTICE GROWTH
“How Much of My Marketing Should Be Direct Access?” There are a couple variables as far as your budgeting goes, but the best way to measure this is to look at your current patient load. Where are they coming from now? We recommend the following percentages for patient acquisition: 50% Repeat Patients or Patient Referrals (using newsletters, referral programs, email, etc), 40% New Patients (from your website and local marketing), and 10% Physician Referrals. If you are currently weak in one of those 3 areas you probably want to begin to weight more of your budget there and make tweaks based on what’s working month-to-month. Never Discharge A Patient, Only Their Condition Now that patients can come directly to you, it’s time to think of them as life-long customers. Most practices see their patients’ cycles as starting at intake and ending at discharge. While this might be the time that someone is actively in your care, their patient cycle should never end. They should be your patient for life, and come back when needed! Balance Print and Digital Marketing Tools Direct access marketing means you have to think about who you’re talking to and how to reach them. Consistency in message, timing, and a balance of print and digital marketing, will get you
a long way towards financial dependence. The goal is to become well known and sought after both online, and with your customer list.
Here are 2 facts you probably already know:
• Direct mail marketing is not dead. Just check your ownmailbox everyday on the number of advertisements • Digital & social marketing is not a fad Could you imagine your practice either without any paper whatsoever or with no computers? The key to marketing to patients is balance. Here’s an example: Case Study | BioSport Physical Therapy Adopts Direct Access: Leo has owned a practice in California for 15 years, built primarily on physician referrals. Over the last 5 years, he began to realize the very real struggles that come with dwindling doctor referrals and Hospital-owned groups. He knew he needed to change, but had no patient marketing experience. In January of 2018, Leo started using Practice Promotions for his patient newsletters as well as a new updated Practice Promotions website. Just 3 months into the newsletter system, Leo’s new patients per month doubled from 30 to 64! Soon after, his website booked over 120 new consultations in its first 4 months.
Summer Marketing for PT Practices
patients in August, to jump-start the fall season. Keep doing your successful actions and you will weather the seasonal effects.
Neil Trickett, Former Practice Owner, CEO & Founder of Practice Promotions
Seasonalmarketing isaboutusingtargetedpromotions,analyzing last year’s data, marketing for future needs, and following your plan. If you do this, your physical therapy practice will continue to see results throughout the seasons. Some times of the year might still experience a drop in stats, but that is ok—every business, fromWall Street to the corner shop, sees seasonal fluctuations in volume and revenues.
Seasonal impacts can start to take effect on the number of patient visits and referrals. So, it can be very tempting to cut expenses by decreasing or stopping your monthly marketing campaigns. By skipping on marketing expenses, you will save some money to offset the lost revenues due to the summer slump right? 100% wrong! It’s vital here to know the difference between expenses and investments. The #1 rule of successful marketing is consistency is key It took your monthly campaigns, such as newsletters, physician mailers, emails or postcards, several months to gain ground and start generating consistent results. Stopping for even one month can set you back and undo months of work. Also, you want the number of patient visits to swing back up in September. So, you need to mail a newsletter in August to get those fall patients back to PT. In fact, you want to be very well prepared and aggressive in marketing to your past and current
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