If you’re anything like I was when I first started my practice, then you probably believe marketing is using an arsenal of tactics to help bring in patients.
You might have also spent a lot of time reading books, listening to podcasts and going to conferences trying to find an approach that works.
You want a way to market that doesn’t make you feel sleazy, pushy or unprofessional. You don’t one to be “one of those guys”.
Now it’s time to throw 90% of that information away.
Not because it’s bad, or useless, but because it adds too much “complexity” to your marketing. It takes too much time away from patient care and producing revenue.
As a therapy-entrepreneur, you don’t need to tangle yourself up in fifty different marketing campaigns and track a million different stats to grow your practice.
In fact, you need the opposite: a strategy and system of utter simplicity.
It is the kind of simplicity you can only achieve by distilling all the available information down to the essence of what matters: creating a remarkable experience that people will talk about and come back for more.
With that single focus, you have an uncomplicated and repeatable marketing process that brings you all the clients you could want.
But most therapists never get this far. They get mired in complexity and never break through to simplicity on the other side.
How do you avoid getting stuck in the complexity?
Begin with empathy.
How would you want the experience to be like if you were in your patient’s shoes?
Walk through their experience from the very first moment that a patient sees or hears about your services to the very last impression.
Think about how you might make each step in the journey something remarkable, something worth talking about, something to come back for again and again.
That’s essential marketing. That’s something you can do. That’s something you have time. That’s something you can master.
Empathy is hard work
Empathy is hard work because it involves tr to ing feel the way other people feel. It’s a challenge to set aside your own emotions and pressures to attend to other people’s feelings.
But once you begin to understand how these people think and feel, you’ll learn how to talk to them and serve them. Which is much more pleasurable than marketing at them. By showing that you understand their needs and desires, you’ll be much more likely to earn their trust to help them.
Identify a specific step you want to change in a patient’s experience at your practice. What do they care about that you don’t care about? What do they want that you don’t want?
Please share your thoughts in the comment section or on social media.
Paul Potter is a physical therapist and mentor who lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, with his wife, who is also a therapist. They have four daughters. For more than 35 years he successfully managed his own private practice. He now shares his knowledge and experience through teaching and mentoring therapists who want to have their own practice.
He has authored On Fire: Ignite Your Passion with a Cash Therapy Practice and the Cash Practice From Scratch Course. His website PaulPotterpt.com is dedicated to helping therapists achieve professional and personal and financial freedom.
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Get Your Own Copy of On Fire
As therapists, we have tremendous opportunity to use our abilities, education, and expertise to enhance client’s lives. What a privilege? If you are in the therapy business to serve people, then my new book On Fire: Ignite Your Passion with a Cash Therapy Practice might help you. The healthcare industry has undergone so many changes lately and many therapists are overwhelmed, overworked and confused on where to turn to for help in the battle.
On Fire takes a close look at innovative therapists who are using alternative ways to deliver high-value care to their patients. Cash therapy services have emerged as a viable alternative to accepting business as usual.
If you are intrigued by the attention that cash-based practices are attracting On Fire is a great primer to help you get up to speed on the key issues and how if might impact your practice. The book is available on Amazon. If you are interested in getting your own copy join my email list and I’ll keep you up to date on the special pre-order bonuses I’m giving away.
