Practice Promotions Newsletter

OCTOBER | 2016

INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

• Use End of the Year Insurance Savings to Increase New Patients • 3 Ways to Reduce the Holiday Slow Down • Social Media Secrets • How to get more PT marketing tips

NEWSLETTER Powerful marketing to build your practice HOW TO PROMOTE END OF YEAR INSURANCE SAVINGS TO YOUR PATIENTS

Marketing ADVICE

By Kristyn O’Connell, Vice President, Administration

their current coverage and see what they spent and what they should pick for the next year. Deductible spending is a big component of this insurance review. How to explain end of year savings First, keep the marketing content easy to follow and simple. We recommend mailing a letter or postcard in conjunction with an email and social media campaign to promote deductible and insurance savings. This allows you to personalize the message with a proper salutation “Dear Mr. Smith” and drive home your mission of putting the patient first. Next, ask questions to prompt the patient to think about the answers. Some examples include: • Have you reviewed your insurance plan and coverage lately? • Did you already spend most or all of this year’s deductible? • Are you in pain? How physical therapy will help you • Do you want to save money on your out of pocket expenses? Start with reviewing their plan and balance and move towards your call to action—contacting the office via phone or website to request an appointment. Hype the benefits of feeling better and ending the year healthy and ready for the new year. After your letter is mailed, we recommend sending a follow up postcard 3-4 weeks later to reinforce your campaign and increase response. The postcard can also be tied to holiday marketing and seasonal messaging with the promotion to maximize end of year insurance savings. You can restate the steps from the letter and really emphasize the need to book appointments before the end of the year. Need help? Call us today to coordinate an end of year benefit letter or postcard. 800-594-7656 Lastly, give patients a simple set of steps to follow. You want them to be able to take immediate action and book their appointment for PT.

In today’s complex world of health insurance, many patients do not understand how to maximize their insurance program’s coverage. Specifically, patients need education on how to reduce their costs for physical therapy treatments. One of the easiest ways to save money on PT is to take advantage of your deductible spending at the end of the year. Practices should start marketing these savings in October to increase new appointments and patient visits in November and December. It’s deductible season At the end of the year, many patients have spent most or all of their insurance plan’s deductible. Patients with family plans, major surgeries, or chronic conditions are especially likely to have a $0 balance remaining on their out of pocket expenses. This means that the cost of physical therapy could be minimal or completely covered by insurance. Another cyclical factor in patient insurance is annual plan changes and renewal. Many companies start promoting the next year’s insurance plans and coverage options in September or October. Thus, many patients decide to review

NEIL’S MARKETING CORNER

What should you post on social media? Each platform is different—Facebook likes longer statuses, Twitter is short and sweet, and LinkedIn is largely for professional use such as networking with physicians. In general, you should post educational articles, clinic news, and patient success stories (with written permission from the patient). Your goal is for people to share your content, which leads others to like your page, visit your website, and call in for more information. Everything you post should link back to your website to ensure the content is attributed to your practice and that people know you are the experts to see for PT. Some examples of social media posts include: • Nutrition tips (even re-posted from other sources) • Tips on exercises to do for back pain, neck pain etc • Tips on prevention for common orthopedic problems • Examples of common condition symptoms

Social Media Secrets EVERY PHYSICAL THERAPY PRACTICE SHOULD FOLLOW

Using social media for your practice canbe a powerful, effective, and low cost marketing platform for your practice. By creating and maintaining active profiles for your clinic, you can communicate your practice’s mission, news, and updates to followers with literally the click of a button. Social media marketing for your business is quite different from using social media in your personal life. You want to follow marketing best practices and still be fun and engaging to really see results from your social media profile.

How often should you post? This can depend on your audience. The goal is to post content that is engaging and informative so it’s quality over quantity. Typically, twice a week is a good starting point to determine your followers’ level of interaction and to test different types of content. You might also find that you can post 3-5 times per week to Twitter and see growth whereas you may only post 2-3 times to Facebook to avoid losing followers. What about LinkedIn? LinkedIn is a powerful social media platform for physical therapy practices, because it is primarily a business to business tool. The goal is to use LinkedIn as a networking

Profile tips for PT practices The first step for effective online marketing is to create your practice’s accounts and social media profile. You should do this for every main social media platform even if you don’t plan to be active on that account. Why? Because you want to protect your brand’s digital identity and avoid having another clinic (or worse an imposter account) take your practice’s preferred username. What platforms are must haves for your social media marketing? Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You want to have complete profiles and be actively marketing on these three platforms. Every social media profile should include your practice’s: • Business name (if you run into character constraints, use your most well- known abbreviation or opt for PT instead of Physical Therapy) • Address Phone number (use the one for the front desk or registration if you have multiple) • Website URL • Primary email address ([email protected] for example)

platform to showcase your practice’s specialties and build relationships with physicians and other referral sources.

You also want to have other key team members from your practice active on LinkedIn. The owners, marketing, and referral coordinators should post from their professional profiles. Then, they should share your practice’s updates to add credibility and strengthen your network with local physicians. Talk to us about your practice’s social media marketing plan. Are done-for-you solutions are easy and effective at attracting more new patients. 800-594-7656

CONNECT With Neil Trickett, PT

Practice Promotions

Practice Promotions Physical Therapy Marketing

WELCOME NEW CLIENTS

ByDeena Fournier, VPof Operations at PracticePromotions 3 WAYS TO REDUCE THE HOLIDAY PATIENT SLOW DOWN

CLIENT RESULTS

2. BRAND GOAL: COMMUNITY RELATIONS

Believe it or not, now is a pivotal time to start prepping your practice for the holiday season. November and December are busy times for your patients and the community. So, it is important to keep your practice top of mind during the holiday rush. One way is to send out holiday postcards to past patients and referral partners. Holiday postcards can be more than just well wishes—they can generate new appointments and referrals to reduce the holiday slow down in your practice. The core component of effective postcard marketing is to keep it simple. You have limited space to convey your message so adding in too much can confuse the recipient. Instead, opt for a straightforward message that is both easy to understand and visually appealing. Let’s look at some ideas for holiday postcards for your PT practice: The holiday season brings its own host of seasonal injuries and pains. Whether its cold weather joint stiffness, back pain from shoveling snow, or strains from carrying heavy boxes and decorations, the holidays are often a time for PT. But, patients usually drop this to the bottom of their long to do list. You need to emphasize the importance of taking care of oneself and staying healthy—so that they can truly enjoy the holidays. Holiday postcards for patient reactivation should use realistic imagery like shoveling snow or carrying shopping bags. Include a thought-provoking headline, “Breaking your back shoveling snow? Or Are you in pain from decking the halls?” Next, use easy to follow steps to get patients to book an appointment. Lastly, drive home your Call to Action (CTA) to get patients to visit your website to make an appointment today. It is important to drive home the “today” piece as many patients already have a million things going on during the holidays—they need to act now. 1. MARKETING GOAL: PATIENT REACTIVATION

The holidays are a great time to network with local businesses and organizations. We do not recommend sending out holiday postcards to individual members of the community. During this time of year, people’s mailboxes are already filled with catalogs and greeting cards. Instead, reach out to 3-5 community groups like the Chamber of Commerce, Junior League, Ruritan/Kiwanis Clubs, country clubs etc. Ask if you can distribute postcards at their holiday event or have some included in gift bags. This gets your postcard directly into the hands of a potential patient. Be sure to use a design and messaging that suits your audience—such as a higher end look for Junior League or country clubs, or a holiday-neutral theme for business associations. 3. BUSINESS GOAL: PATIENT TO PATIENT REFERRALS During the holidays, people often meet up with friends and family that they don’t see throughout the year. This means catching up on how everyone has been doing the past months, which may mean talking about injuries or surgeries. What if your patients could help a friend or family member in pain by referring them to your clinic? Holiday postcards with a clear referral marketing strategy get patients to share their positive PT experience with others and to help them feel better. A referral incentive, such as a free item or gift card, can help encourage patients by keeping your postcard top of mind. As the holidays approach, you want to have your practice’s marketing ready to go well in advance. You should coordinate your holiday postcards to be mailed by early December so that they arrive before folks are too consumed with seasonal events. If you are supplying postcards to a community event, you want to have them at the office at least 2 weeks beforehand so that they can be added to gift bags or programs.

“Practice Promotions has really helped grow our referring doctors. I have gotten 20 new referring doctors in the last few months! We went from 371

patient visits a week when we started, through many highest-evers, reaching currently 661 patient visits a week. - Michael Brunet, Owner, Back in Motion Physical Therapy, LLC

POWERFUL PT MARKETING TIPS

Visit our blogs today for marketing articles on: • New Patient Marketing • Digital and Social Media Marketing • Physician Referral Marketing • Word of Mouth Referral Marketing

www.practicepromotions.net www.PTpeformancewebsites.com

7305 Hancock Village Drive, Suite 117 Chesterfield, VA 23832 800-594-7656

NEWSLETTER

INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

• Use End of the Year Insurance Savings to Increase New Patients • 3 Ways to Reduce the Holiday Slow Down • Social Media Secrets • How to get more PT marketing tips

PracticePromotions.net

HOW WELL ARE YOU USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO ATTRACT NEW PATIENTS?

Having a powerful online presence in today’s world can make or break your practice. You can be inches away from ultimate success, having more financial stability, success and freedom at your practice. With the right tools you can leverage the power of social media and the internet to attract a growing volume of new patients into your practice. A PT Performance Website automatically connects each of the 3 key social media sites you need to attract more new patients from accross the web including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

1. Blogging and Email Newsletters We provide done for you email newsletters and blog articles published every two weeks centered around popular physical therapy topics to draw more people to your website.

2. Coordinated Social Media Posts Your blog is connected to Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin allowing you to share your posts with all these social media outlets at one time,

3. We teach you how to use Facebook to Reach a large audience Leverage the power of social media by targeting your PT marketing to people with specific interests within a certain radius around your practice and capturing their information with your website.

Rank High in Google We pack your website with SEO, Google analytics, social media, and more technology to allow new patients to easily find you on the internet. 93% of our PT Performance Website clients rank at the top of Google.

Educate Patients Use your website as a powerful platform to position your practice as the experts to turn too. Excite visitors about the solutions you provide to their problems.

Connect to Your Community Social media is an amazing way to connect with new patients in the community. Our software and done-for- you programs, helps you attract new patients using Facebook, Twitter and Linked-in.

Checkout The Product Webinar

PTPerformanceWebsites.com

DO YOU CONSISTENTLY MARKET TO YOUR CURRENT AND PAST PATIENTS?

Are You Frustrated With... 1. Having no predictability where to consistently get new patients? 2. Physicians not seeing the value in your service and referring in network to their own group or hospital?

The Practice Newsletter System 2.0 consists of high quality, professional practice newsletters sent out for you on a consistent basis that reactivates past patients, booms word- of-mouth referrals and draws attention from hundreds of local physicians. Each month we custom design, print and mail out for you. You also get to use an awesome digital newsletter across social media and email. Furthermore, bring patients in through an online marketing funnel of ebooks, landing pages and email follow-up campagins. A done-for-you service that focuses heavily on getting you results. Prepare to watch your new patients soar!

3. Inconsistent new patient numbers?

Then you should be sending a monthly practice newsletter to your patients!

Leverage Online Referrals Use your digital newsletter across social media, emails. Attract new patients in through landing pages and online marketing funnels to contact your clinic!

Market to Your Patient Base Reactivate a growing volume of past patients back for care with top PT marketing strategies.

Attract More Patient Referrals Use proven PT marketing actions that work to boom word-of-mouth referrals from current and past patients.

SEE FOR YOURSELF HOW GOOD THESE PRACTICE NEWSLETTERS LOOK & RECEIVE POWERFUL PT MARKETING TIPS! GET OUR FREE SAMPLE KIT! www.PracticePromotions.net/SampleKit

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