Online Marketing for Therapists – 3 Ideas You Can Implement Today
“Back in my day, you could make a post on ye old Facebook and patients would come running like flies on a dead possum!”
Seriously – things used to be a lot more simple, but the world of online marketing for therapists has changed.
You could slap up a handful of grainy images of you smiling with your clients in the clinic with bad lighting, sing something to the tune of “My clients are the best!” and then fill your caseload as fast as you could hit “post.” Those days are far, far behind us. Yet, a lot of therapists and small business owners didn’t get the memo and are spending an exorbitant amount of time posting to social media and an even more exorbitant amount of time complaining about it.
And time is freaking expensive.
You should know that the high lords of these tech platforms to which we hitch our businesses to are always changing the rules of engagement. These rules of engagement dictate who wins and who closes their doors – because whether you’re a telehealth first practice or you’re slinging dry needles in the clinic, the first place your clients will go to interact with you is your website.
The world of online marketing for therapists is an ever-evolving one. One that requires your marketing strategy to be agile and your patience to be long-fused.
All of us at Fan Club Brands work to help physical therapists grow their cash-pay and insurance-based practices.
We do this through a mix of brand messaging, design, and marketing. After Method Physical Therapy worked with us to revamp their messaging and website, they saw a 30% increase in client evaluations within one month!
Curious how your website is doing?
1. Organic Traffic is Free 99
Organic traffic is the kind of traffic that business owners swoon over – because it’s free.
It’s the folks who land on your website because they either:
Know who you are and went directly to your site
Were referred to you and went directly to your site
Or they were googling (or asking an AI bot) for a recommendation or question about something they were experiencing, and your website popped up.
The top two bullets are the best, but you can’t rely on them alone to build your business. The last bullet is the one that you have to focus on – and it’s the hardest. Content marketing for therapists is one of the most powerful ways to increase your visibility.
The content you produce, if done right, will increase the likelihood that your website (or blog, eBook, article, video, etc.) will be within the first few that pop up in a Google search query – meaning the more business you’ll be able to generate.
2. SEO 3.0 - The Future is Here
When it comes to online marketing for therapists, searchability is everything. Platforms like google, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are where people go to ask questions in hopes of finding a business or resource that can help them answer those questions.
Your business relies on your ability to remain searchable. But hold your breath - with the rollout of Google Search 3.0, things are going to get a little harder 😢.
Up to 50% of all Google searches currently leverage AI to generate the answer for you.
And we’re sure you’ve seen it – the few lines of text at the top of your search that answer your question without you having to click on any link. That’s AI taking the top sources that address a given topic and creating a quick summary of their combined answers.
Pros
As a user, you can get the answer quickly.
As a business, if your content is one of the top pieces of content it references, you will be featured at the top of the page.
Cons
People are less likely to scroll below that response box
It’s damn hard to be one of the top pieces of content with all the competition out there
Blogging for therapists is going to be one of the top things you’ll want to focus on to increase your chances of getting found in a search. And because we know you’re asking – yes – there is a whole to-do list of things that you need to consider when it comes to blogging effectively. Download this free blog template to help you organize while writing, or reach out to us so we can give you the skinny on all things SEO.
3. It’s all about reputation management man!
In a service-based market, you will live and die by your reputation because you are selling how you make people feel. Feeling is the cumulation of the interpersonal experiences and conversations had during the receiving of a service.
Basically, if you’re an asshole, your business won’t be doing so hot.
Reputation is more than what people say about you while kicking it at the brewery after going on a run with their friends. It’s about what people say about you online.
Online marketing for therapists requires you to focus on:
Your Google reviews. Make sure you are putting out a solid effort to acquire these with every patient. And then respond to them once you do get them.
Monitoring and gathering reviews on other platforms - like Reddit forums and social media
Showing the world how you think through content.
Leveraging strategic partnerships to talk about you in digital spaces on your behalf.
To sum everything up, online marketing for therapists comes down to learning the rules of engagement for each platform on which your business operates today.
Subscribe to marketing newsletters – like this one – or snoop LinkedIn to stay up to date. We know it can be overwhelming. You went to school to become a doctor of physical therapy not a doctor of marketing (if there is such a thing). But being a small business owner requires us to become Swiss army knives rather than specialty knives to be successful.
Focus on SEO optimizing your website and content, and monitoring your reputation – it’s the most strategic way to play the marketing game without breaking the bank.
