Managing Your PT Practice Marketing Budget
Why is having a marketing campaign so important for your physical therapy clinic or private practice?
Having a successful marketing campaign can help your clinic attract a new patient as well as retain existing clients. Your physical therapy marketing strategy should be at the forefront of your efforts to gain a referral, attract a new potential patient or grow your physical therapy practice.
The first thing you need to do is to understand your finances. A balanced budget orchestrates how your physical therapy business will run, and that includes your marketing campaign.
A lot of marketing efforts consider that a certain percentage of your revenue should go into marketing your clinic.
Some business owners claim that you should spend at least 5% of your revenue on your online marketing strategy, otherwise it could lead to a decline in patient volume or stagnant growth for your PT clinic. A lot of physical therapy businesses spend 7-8% of their gross income on marketing.
Take a look at your marketing stats. Do you have a solid marketing plan in place or do you find your physical therapy marketing plan to be all over the place without growth stability and you’re seeing a decline in patient volume?
Experts claim that you need to focus your business plan on gaining a “return on investment.” But this way of thinking can be flawed.
Sometimes you need to think outside the box; what practices can you utilize that most other PT clinics are not? This is the question I will be answering for you today.
How Much Should Physical Therapists Spend On Marketing?
I think the best way to answer this is to get you to think like an investor.
I would encourage you to want to spend as much money as you possibly can on your marketing. The more money that you spend should mean a bigger return for you.
So don’t limit yourself by putting a cap on this. Sure, start with something like $1,000, and spend that according to your town, your area, and your perfect patient.
Maybe the situation would be better for you to spend more on Google and less on Facebook, or vice versa. Once you’ve got your perfect patient identified, research how their personality type searches for advice. If you’re more likely to catch their eye on Facebook, then advertise more there, and if it’s Google they prefer, use that.
So dig a little bit to figure out how and where to spend that money. Don’t be in love with Google, and don’t be in love with Facebook. It might be Bing, it might be Instagram or other social media, but you’ll figure that out based on the research or that statistics.
Now the thing I want you to really think about is why would you stop at $1,000? If $1,000 returns you $1,100, you’ve got to be happy with that at first.
For me, when I invest in anything, the number one thing that I look for is not return on investment, it’s actually return OF investment.
The typical person on the street cares only about the money that they make from their investments and that’s why they lose more often than not. If you start to think about investing, then the first milestone that needs to be reached is actually return OF your investment.
If you spend $1,000, how quickly can you get $1,000 dollars back?
You may start your marketing campaign by simply striving to get a return OF your investment. But after you improve on this marketing plan you will hopefully be able to increase that return manifold.
After some time, you might spend $1,000 and bring in a profit of $1,200, and then eventually $2,000, or even $10,000.
At this point now, you might be spending $1,000 to make $10,000. If you spend $2,000 to make $20,000 – why would you not want to do that? Conversely we could go to $3,000 to make $30,000. That’s the way I would encourage you to think about your marketing strategy and your clinic’s marketing budget.
If you want to grow your business, think like an investor. I don’t have a cap on the expenses of marketing, and neither should you. I will spend as much as I need to to make the money that I want. I care more about what I make than what I spend. I encourage you to do the same when considering your clinic’s marketing budget.
If you look at physical therapy practice that is struggling right now, they have a poor mindset in terms of what they’re willing to spend. They’re looking more at the budget, the $800 or $1,000, and what they should be thinking about is what’s the potential upside.
First of all, remember, what’s my likelihood of getting your money back that if you spend $1,000 on Google. What are the chances that within 30 days you will get an appropriate number of phone calls, say 3, 4 or 5 phone calls. You need to be able to make $1,000 off of five phone calls for people looking for physical therapy. If you get those five phone calls, and you convert one or two patients, all of a sudden you’re making $2,000-$3,000. Ten phone calls? $6,000. And so on.
So my message as you consider this is do not limit yourself. Don’t put a label on your marketing budget. Think like an investor, and investors think about ROI (return on investment) after return OF investment.
That is where you need to start and that is the way you need to think when wondering how you should spend money on marketing as a physical therapist.
To learn more about client lead generation and developing a marketing budget, check out this video where I talk more on the topic:
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