Having a web presence is key to marketing your physical therapy practice. Having a website will enhance the professionalism of your practice and lend credibility to practice as a business for patients, referrers and other interested parties.
If you don’t have a website then you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to market your practice and to be found by patients who need care in your local area. In the “old” days, having a website was a bit of production and required some level of technical knowledge or a willingness to hire a webmaster who could take care of things for you. These days, many places offer a turn key solution where you can pick a domain name (like mypractice.com) and create a full one page website. There are still many companies that focus on website design. Some of them are even specific to medical practice websites and even some yet focused on physical therapy in particular. These might be a good option if you want to take your website a bit further, but don’t have the time or expertise.
If you’re using a Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook or another free email provider then you are doing your physical therapy practice a bit a disservice from a marketing perspective. You should be using an email address at your domain name such as Joe@MyPractice.com. This will improve how professional your practice appears and will give you a subtle (but inexpensive) branding opportunity. An added benefit from a compliance perspective is that you can control your employee’s access and terminate such access if the person leaves your practice.
You’ve probably never heard of a NAP Citation. NAP stands for name, address, phone number. Having your name, address, and phone number accurately on your website is hugely important to Google, Bing and other search engines. It’s important for local search and considered by many to be a foundational factor for how your practice ranks on search engines.Ensure your business name, address and phone number are consistent on your site as well as all applicable pages. For example, if your practice name is Awesome Physical Therapy, then call yourself Awesome Physical Therapy on your site, not Awesome PT or APT, etc. In addition, don’t list multiple phone numbers (unless they are for different locations of your practice).
Blogging can be fun and it’s nice to share what’s happening in your practice and other things that your patients may find to be helpful. With that said, blogging requires time. A stale blog isn’t better than not having a blog. The reasoning is that visitors to your website will find dated posts and it will make your site feel old.Here’s another idea to consider. If you have time to write a few articles but you don’t have enough time to create articles on a regular basis, then consider writing articles and putting them under your website under something like “Helpful Info”. This can offer patients something to read without committing you to something you may not be able to sustain.
Blogging can be a challenge because of the time it takes to write articles but what about just sharing pictures? Snapping a photo and posting it can be a less intensive commitment. Here comes the BUT, the “but” is HIPAA. You should be very careful about posting photos with patients without prior consent. That helps keep you out of hot water and gives you sweet shots to share.
If you’re not asking patients for a review (Google, Facebook, etc) then you’re leaving a key opportunity on the table. This should be a standard part of your discharge procedure and part of your workflow.
A website is a cornerstone of any physical therapy practice marketing strategy. If you don’t have one, get one. If you have one, spend a few minutes on it and make the most of your website so that it delivers you all the value that it can.
