Tell The World
October 29, 2009 by Nitin
Filed under Grow Your Private Practice
It’s not a secret.
The backbone of any physical therapy practice is the development of referral relationships. Cultivating such relationships with patients is the key to physical therapy private practice success.
Personal contact with patient referral sources, the patient community and insurance companies is the most powerful way to boost your credibility as a provider and cement your position as the provider of choice in your community.
The problem with personal contact is that we as private practice owners have not been conditioned to engage in one-on-one relationship building as a part of our education. Physical therapy school teaches us to be excellent clinicians with a strong ability to evaluate and treat patients. However, marketing is an entirely different ball game, and it’s not something we are taught in school.
It’s easy to learn though, and we are fast learners.
Marketing physical therapy requires a high level of personal contact with patients, physicians and the local media. The ideal way to do this is to communicate with several individuals at one time, and limit individual contact (with the intention to leverage time) with the most influential referral sources only. In other words, give yourself the importance you deserve, and plan your days and weeks wisely, well in advance.
For example, with my blog, I plan my content 8 weeks in advance. For example, if I was to do an interview with a physical therapy private practice owner (to bring the content to you) this week, the interview would be scheduled to appear on this blog 8 weeks from today, because I plan my content well in advance. There are exceptions, of course, but this demonstrates the importance of planning.
If you have a clear plan about physical therapy marketing, and know what you are going to do to market your physical therapy private practice the next day, week or month, you are on the right track.
Remember, the best way to promote yourself as a physical therapy private practice owner is to go out into the real world and meet people with the intention of letting them know about you.
You can also leverage relationships with patients to build relationships with their physicians.
A simple strategy that has worked for us in our clinic is a “Thank You” card. Remember, a “Thank You” card to a physician is much more effective when it comes from the patient and not from the provider. The old strategy for physical therapy private practice marketing is if you, as a provider, send a “thank you” card to the physician as a way of expressing gratitude.
What do you think happens?
This card may not be read at all.
Let’s try something different now – this card should come from the patient. When you treat a patient, ask the patient during one of their visits to stop for a moment and fill out a quick thank you card they receive from the receptionist. Your friendly receptionist or staff can offer to mail the card to the physician on behalf of the patient. This little “Thank You” card from the patient, addressed to the physician, is a powerful way to enhance quality patient referrals from the same physician.
Physicians and their staff are more likely to read notes and “Thank You” cards that come from patients than those coming from providers.
Sssshhh…..Protocol X
October 23, 2009 by Nitin
Filed under Grow Your Private Practice
You heard it here first.
Get ready for a BIG announcement that will change the way you market your practice, a top secret project that involves some of the most astute physical therapists in the industry, marketing geniuses that can dissect your practice to reveal hidden revenue streams in the span of a few seconds.
It’s only going to be open for a limited time for a select few physical therapists who are true action takers willing to take their practice to the next level. I cannot reveal any more details now because the project is top secret and we have named it ‘Protocol X’.
My top marketing prediction for 2010 is……Protocol X will be the BIGGEST marketing thing the private practice industry has ever seen.
I’m writing you from Orlando international airport after another intensive round of masterminding with some of the top private practice owners and business owners in the country.
I was surprised to get over 247 emails this week from therapists asking me how to join the mastermind group and the big announcement is coming soon.
Oh by the way, these masterminds are private groups run by me (and not some marketing company), where I lift the curtains and reveal the latest strategies and techniques to increase referrals and literally revolutionize your practice, and we are NOT affiliated with any companies or consultants and the like.
If you want more information, wait just 2 more weeks. After my talk at the annual PPS conference in Colorado, where I speak on Thursday afternoon November 12th, and chair a round table conference the same evening, I will let you know everything there is to know.
The ‘new way’ to do business as a private practice is to merge and integrate online and offline revenue streams. In my case, I generate multiple 6 figures with my online businesses (and this is not something I have ever revealed until today) while my cash-paying wellness programs now function on autopilot since they have been completely delegated to motivated staff members, who are financially vested in the growth of my business.
If you want to cultivate online relationships with patients and referral sources and integrate them into offline (regular) advertising to ignite referrals in your practice, this is the most important blog post you will ever read.
I recently interviewed Srini Saripallu, also known as the king of blogging in the internet world and is a well known blogger generating six figures online. Srini teaches blogging and income strategies, online income strategies on his blog http://www.gorichonline.com
I asked Srini several candid questions during this exhaustive interview, including:
- How can we, as physical therapists and health professionals, improve interaction with the visitors on our website and more importantly to get them to initiate contact with us.
- How to transform a website visitor from prospect to potential patient to patient to potential referral source to raving fan – moving them up the ascension ladder.
TO LISTEN TO THE AUDIO INTERVIEW, PLEASE CLICK BELOW (PARDON SOME OF THE SILENCE AT THE START OF THE CALL WHILE SRINI WAS TRYING TO RECORD THE CALL AT HIS END)
- The importance of having an ebook on your site.
- The concept of an ‘opt-in’, collecting names and email addresses of visitors to your website and ‘cultivating’ the email list.
- How to provide patients with the information they want, and avoid common pitfalls in website and blog content.
- How to reconnect the patient with the emotional process of healing, the reason that bought them to you in the first place, and leverage that process to their benefit (and yours) by cultivating online ‘communities’ using social media
- How to depict yourself and your therapists as caretakers, and build a strong bond from the first interaction the patient has with you (your website).
- How to instantly position yourself as an expert in your community.
- How to create valuable, meaningful content for your website in minutes by exploiting audio and video technology
and much much more…
Keep in mind that Srini tends to get a little technical at times, which is his nature. There are several marketing lessons hidden in this article, and the interview is worth listening to over and over again.
Las Vegas Masterminding – Secrets To 21 New Patients
October 18, 2009 by Nitin
Filed under Grow Your Private Practice
I’m writing you sipping a cup of coffee in a lounge at the MGM Grande Hotel in Las Vegas, masterminding with a private group of the most successful, elite group of physical therapists, private practitioners and business owners you will ever meet.
The information exchange in this group is not for the faint hearted – it’s light years ahead of the nearest competition. These therapists work less than 20 hours a week and have practices generating 7 figures in revenue.
This group has long abandoned traditional ways of referral generation. Each member overcomes seemingly insurmountable barriers (how will I get the physician to refer to me) as easily as a knife cuts through warm butter (I have to find the time to call that physician back). They are not squeamish, sensitive or emotionally conflicted about marketing their practice – they are POWERHOUSES at marketing and pioneers in time management, referral generation and business success. They go deep with their specializations (like I mentioned in my blog earlier this week) and take their marketing to a whole new level.
It’s said that inspiration comes at critical moments that define your practice. In the past 24 hours, my presentation has helped the group define not one, but 6 such a-ha moments that will further increase revenues including:
- How to set up credit card acceptance without the need for a physical credit card terminal (internet based cc acceptance and wireless credit card swiping machines), and how to get patients to want to give you their credit card information without you asking for it – allowing them to settle dues, copays, pay for additional services etc
- How to get patients to clamor to buy additional products and services (which you may not even be offering yet, and how to set them up in minutes)
- How to get physicians to call you begging to be featured in your newsletter
- How to automatically capture several thousands (yes, thousand) names and email addresses of potential patients in your area using innovative offline (fishbowl method) and online campaigns (did you know youtube, facebook and craiglist can reveal new sources of patients, and these patients are yours for the taking if you know how to leverage these online sources?). If you are not doing this in your area, a competitor will, in the next few weeks.
- How to use anticipation and perception to create such a tremendous sense of value for your services so patients never ever hesitate to pay you what you ask for, because they think they are underpaying for your (overvalued) service.
- How to automate your marketing with time-tested, done-for-you material, so you control your practice and manage your staff to achieve TRUE freedom, instead of your practice controlling you
- The importance of viral marketing in your physical therapy business
Speaking of success, Ritika (my wife, also a PT) and I worked day and night for months creating the perfect marketing system for private practices and it was amazing that over 100 charter members signed up within weeks to lock in their Therapy Newsletter territory.
Our interest list is now over 4978 therapists, all of whom have shown interest in the newsletter.
In fact, I got seven emails this morning from physical therapists asking if they can sign up for Therapy Newsletter and lock in their territory. If you don’t know what Therapy Newsletter is, you can get more information here:
http://snipurl.com/21newpatients
Going Deep, Not Wide
October 9, 2009 by Nitin
Filed under Grow Your Private Practice
Marketing is like a 100 meter race. You win it with speed and speed alone. You don’t win a sprint by combining strength, endurance, power and speed.
It’s easier to dig a deeper hole in the ground than it is to dig a wider one. You spend less energy, and are more likely to strike metal while shoveling less dirt.
If you want to bring in more patients to your practice, focusing on the key referral sources will yield more results, as opposed to trying to find anybody and everybody to refer.
Just because you use the same strategies on tens, maybe hundreds of doctors does not mean it will bring you more patients. In fact, the more you use a bad strategy, the greater the number of rejections and disappointments.
On the other hand, the right strategy can work well with 8 out of 10 referral sources.
The best referral generation strategy in your practice has components that are connected by a series of dots. These dots include
a) Specialization
b) Quality
c) Frequency
d) Timing
e) Trust
The law of numbers does not work with physical therapy marketing, the law of quality and patient satisfaction does.
Your message, focus and strategy has to be so precise and targeted, that patients and referral sources must sit up and take notice, otherwise you will get lost in the vast sea of invisibility that plagues many private practices.
In this age of consumerism and limited patience, we only get one shot.
Make it count by going deep with your physical therapy marketing, not wide.
PS – If you have not signed up for your 60 day trial of Therapy Newsletter, where 5 therapists go to work for you twice a month and write high quality-patient content that is automatically delivered to your patients, physicians and referral sources, visit this site now http://www.therapynewsletter.com
Low Cost Marketing
October 5, 2009 by Nitin
Filed under Grow Your Private Practice
Nitin Chhoda: Hi everyone. This is Nitin Chhoda. I am a physical therapist in private practice from nitin360.com and I have on the phone with me, Tannus Quatre. Tannus is a physical therapist and pretty uniquely qualified physical therapist. He is not just a PT, he is also an MBA and expert in marketing, physical therapy business consultant and a principal of vantage clinical solutions, also on the web at vantageclinicalsolutions.com. Tannus and I are doing a presentation together later this year at the private practice session of the APTA November ’09. Tannus has a lot of outstanding ideas on how physical therapists in private practice should market themselves in fact he is a consultant as I mentioned earlier. Tannus has also presented at the recent Baltimore Annual Convention at the APTA and will also be speaking at CSM next year. I can’t wait to go there and see if we can speak with him, cheer for him and maybe even distract him while I am sitting in the audience just for fun. Again, thanks for being on the call today. I appreciate it.
Tannus Quatre: It’s my pleasure.
Nitin Chhoda: Let us go ahead and give some outstanding content to our listeners and our readers on both my blog and as well as your blog for a physical therapist in private practice who is on a budget. Starting out new with few or no relationships with physicians, with perhaps 20 or 30 good contacts in the local community, what are some of the things that he or she should do to start generating referrals and start getting a name going in the local community?
TO LISTEN TO THE AUDIO, PLEASE CLICK HERE
Tannus Quatre: It is really common question. A lot of people that are starting practices or are trying to market existing practices like marketing in a fairly haphazard dollar expense and really the case what I tell my clients is that marketing is really you taking the marketing word out of it. Focus on the word relationship that is really what it is all about and relationships. Take time but they don’t have to take a lot of money. The first thing that I emphasize is focus on relationship lingering meaningful relationship which potentially could be referral sources so business relationships as well those will be getting your practice that would be patient or client relationships. Secondly, just be involved, there is not always by being involved in the community. A lot of times you will come across opportunities otherwise, you will not have any ability to tap into, so being involved in the community not even related to physical therapy, something involved in the chambers, being involved with sporting events in organization, anything that gets you involved in the community and puts you face to face with people in the community that might at some point in time might want to learn about your services or might refer to your services is a great way to initiate the marketing effort at minimal to no cost at all.
