Physical Therapy Marketing Done For You By PTRM

What You Will See At The 2010 MDT Conference

At the MDT 2010 Conference you can see a complete system for marketing McKenzie and other physical therapy treatment approaches. The system takes advantage of the latest affordable marketing methods and technologies that have proven successful for growing your business with McKenzie.

McKenzie Marketing System Flow Chart

See samples of exclusive materials produced specifically an INTEGRATED system of marketing the McKenzie Method including:

Websites
Search engine optimization and internet marketing
Patient guides and clinic brochures
Direct mail
Physician letters
Social media strategies - using technologies like blogs and Facebook
Follow up systems for patients and physicians
Referral programs - friends and family
Patient loyalty program
Support - how PTRM implements and manages the entire system for you so you can do what you do best.

The Landscape of the Physical Therapy Business Has Changed And What This Means For Marketing The McKenzie Method

If you roll back the clock twenty-five or thirty years, you will see a market for PT services almost completely driven by physicians. Not anymore. Today patients have access to information that allows them to compare diagnoses, treatment options, and even check on care providers. Physicians are no longer the only source of information considered. In addition, the healthcare system is pushing more and more non-emergent care directly to secondary providers.

This new environment brings with it a shift to increased acceptance of direct access therapies, placing new demands on all care providers to learn how to compete for business in an open market. As with any change, it can be viewed as a threat or an opportunity; either way, no matter which view you hold, reading this may help you gain a clearer vision of the right path to success amidst the changing landscape of the physical therapy business.

Today we’ve got a new situation; patients and doctors no longer have to rely on limited sources of information about diagnoses and treatment options. The landscape of the physical therapy business now includes easy access to information, lots of choices (increased competition), and more resistance to act based on just one source of information. All of this has lengthened decision cycles for non-emergent care. There is also price competition that didn’t exist before.

Because patients find themselves sifting through a stream of unfiltered information coming from a variety of sources, gaps in their confidence have crept in. These gaps we call "Credibility Gaps." To state it another way, "Credibility Gaps" are the patient’s (and doctor’s) inability to determine whether any of the care providers or any of the treatment options like McKenzie are really the best (or only) recommendations available.

These Gaps are the crux of the problem. Do you think patients REALLY want to sort through all this information on their own? What’s missing from their decision process that leaves their health care "itch" unscratched? Do patients really want to gather and interpret information as they happen upon it through their internet search engine? Of course not, but the lack of a more comprehensive discourse with their doctors have left them craving new information – new information that holds the promise of a more satisfying answer.

For all of these reasons, patients feel out of control, with no path to closure. Isn’t that why they went to the doctor in the first place? What about the doctor? Can he/she really afford to spend 30 minutes with EACH patient reviewing ALL the possibilities? No, of course not.

To overcome all of the marketing challenges, McKenzie practitioners who want control over the growth of their practice have to be more than relationship- building super men and women armed with a bunch of ordinary follow up letters, free lunches, and slick-looking ads.