From Flyers to Facebook: Lessons in Therapy Marketing

 In this episode of "Animals and Aquatics in OT," host Gina explores effective marketing strategies for unique private practices incorporating hippotherapy or aquatics. Reflecting on recent conferences attended and the significance of marketing, Gina discusses the concept of brand storytelling, emphasizing values and mission over traditional branding elements. She shares insights into failed marketing strategies like flyers and doctor referrals and highlights pitfalls to avoid, including focusing solely on animals or aquatics and inconsistent marketing efforts. Gina reveals the practice's number one successful strategy. Additional successful strategies like networking with other therapists and tracking client sources are discussed. Listeners are encouraged to rate and review the podcast to support future episodes. 

Transcript

Microphone (2- Logitech USB Headset) & Integrated Camera 0:00

Hello? Hello? Hello. March has been at absolutely wild month. And if you've been following along, you know, that the American hippotherapy association conference happened this month, as well as the American occupational therapy association AOTA conference happened this month. And it has been an amazing learning journey. It really feels like a quantum leap in being able to put some new pieces. Into our practice into our view of occupational therapy. And I don't want to shortchange that. So we are going to do. Some deep dive episodes in our experiences from conference. So that's just a little bit of an update. Today. I want to take some time to talk about something that's really becoming very current for us, and that is marketing. So today we're going to talk about some strategies that are working for marketing our private practice. And for you that may work for you in marketing. Your practice or your program that is incorporating animals or aquatics. Welcome to animals and aquatics and OT, where we explore strategies for unique private practices, incorporating hippotherapy or aquatics. I'm your host Gina and in today's episode, we'll delve into the most effective marketing tactics that have worked for us, some pitfalls to avoid. And the importance of crafting your own brand story for your practice. So when we talk about brand story, most people think about that's just your logo. It's your colors. It's the look and feel. Maybe you have a tagline. And well, those can be important components of your brand. Often there are things that your clients don't really care about all that much. I'm sure if you pulled our clients for our business about what was our logo or what are our brand colors? I am 99%. Sure. None of them would know what they are. And. I think that points to some things that are really important that. What we think about as our brand, the colors and logos and. That part. Is not near as important as explaining to people. What we do. Why we do it and how it can help. So beyond the services you offer, your brand story is really about your practice and. How it explains your values, your mission. How did you come to work in this area of practice? Why are you doing the work that you're doing? It really is a compelling story that encourages clients to come alongside us and see if that resonates with them because. Unlike. A big name company, that's selling shoes or soda. When we're talking about therapy, it's something that is very personal. It's very connecting to people. And they want to know who that they're, who they are working with. And they want to get a feeling if you're going to be a good fit for them often before they reach out the first time, or this could also be part of an email sequence or an email exchange that you're having with them. And for us, we found that people will come alongside us in our email and social media for 6, 9, 12 months sometimes before they're ready to work with us. And we want to be able to convey some of the same. Values that we hold some things about our practice that are really important to us over and over again. I just want to give you a little hint. Not the whole thing that in a future episode, we are going to talk about our experience of working with a copywriter to craft our own new, updated brand story and so in our experience, we're learning a lot as we go through the process. And three things really came up for us that were really big. And we've never talked about them, but as we were working through this process with our amazing copywriter, we found like, wow, there's these themes that keep coming up and we've never talked about them. So again, let's just a little sneak peek, but we're going to be getting into that more deeply. So. You want to be able to explain. Who you can help. Who you enjoy working with what you do and all in very client friendly terms. And so when I look at a lot of marketing pieces for clients that are part of business barn raising. It's often written in therapists speak. And so we need to be able to deconstruct our therapists speak and really speak to our target audience. So my target audience is often parents, so I need to speak to parents right. And being a parent myself, if I can switch between those two modes, right. I can think about if I was reading at therapist's website, what might be some of the things that I would want to know? And then, having a parent, who's a friend who is not a potential client and say like, Hey, can you just read through this? What questions do you have? And our mom buddies can be really helpful in giving us some feedback. As far as the clarity of information that we're providing. So next, I want to go over three strategies that have failed us, and these strategies are recommended fairly often. They might work for you, but they have not worked for us. So it's important to experiment with different marketing strategies. And not all of them are going to give you the results that you want. And I find myself sometimes coming back to these strategies, because you see them recommended as the things you should do. And so we've encountered these three approaches that did not hit the mark for us. Maybe we just, we did not get any return on investment for them. We had zero. Zero client conversions. The first one that I would say is flyers. May we make a beautiful flyer about our therapy services. We go around the community or we have people who are helping us willing to help us interns, fieldwork students. Who are going to hang them up around the community. And again, sometimes I'm still like, oh, I would love to hang up a flyer or, put a flyer and hang it up here. I see some of my potential clients here at this playground or at the library. And for us, it just, it has not been effective. So flyers have a good. Visual image. Right? You can include the information in them. But for us, they haven't actually converted to actual clients. Now the next one. Again, this may be very different if you work in a state that is not direct access. So we're in New Jersey. We have direct access to our clients for occupational therapy services. And so for us, doctor referrals have not been effective now, forming partnerships with other healthcare preferred. Forming partnerships with other healthcare professionals can be super beneficial. But relying solely on doctor referrals did not generate any clients for us. And it may not generate a consistent stream of clients. We certainly have a few doctors that we know that are very much believers in. Therapist who incorporate hippotherapy or aquatic therapy. And they will make general recommendations to their clients that they see you should look and see if you can find a therapist that incorporates hippotherapy, you should look for aquatic therapy, but they won't recommend specific practices. And that's okay. There's a number of providers in our area and families can, find us that way. But we, I remember being so excited for that first phone call with the neurodevelopmental pediatrician. In my town. She is the number one. Developmental bougie is the only developmental pediatrician in my town. And I got a one-on-one phone call with her from LinkedIn. I reached out via LinkedIn and I got a one-on-one phone call with her. I didn't have to go through the office staff. And I was just, I was so excited. I thought like this is going to be amazing. We're to tell her about our practice. We're right here in her, in, in their town. And. I do see some of her. Patients, but not because she referred them to us. So they find us other ways. And I'm going to talk about that in a minute. The last thing that really seems like something you should be doing and maybe in your area of the country, you should be doing it. But for us. It has not been successful in converting to clients. So it has had some other successes and I'll jump into that. And that's live events. And what do I mean by live events? I mean, going to community days, going to vendor fairs, going to. Any of those events where, people are coming to see. Programs and services in their area, as well as we have run our own live events, like a sensory Saturday event, where we bring our therapy, goats out, we showcase some of the stuff we do. We offer to lead a little hike. We've had a quest where if the families went through and completed the quest and brought the quest back to us through some of the trails that we use for nature-based services, then the child could get a little prize and then we would talk about our services. And those were extremely well attended. And so from that perspective, they were very successful, but they didn't actually convert to clients. So we weren't drawing the right people in at that time by using live events. So live events definitely offer us an opportunity to engage with our community face-to-face. But there for us, they're very, very resource heavy because we have, we are, we don't have to, but we are bringing our therapy goats along. So that requires everything that means bringing live animals to an event and everything that we need to do to protect their welfare. As well as. Managing the face of therapy, so to speak, so interacting with people as they're coming up and talking with us. So. We haven't found live events to be incredibly beneficial and actually converting to clients, increasing community awareness. Yes. That's certainly part of it, but again, they were extremely well attended. We had a number of interest from some of the live events. People who gave us their email addresses told us they were interested, but they didn't actually convert into clients. So there could be a number of things that went wrong along that process. But we just haven't found for the amount of effort. It takes us to attend a live event. That it has been a very good return on investment yet. Now, before we jump into the number one thing that has absolutely been successful for us. I just want to cover two pitfalls to avoid. And when you're working in a niche practice that incorporates animals or aquatics, there are definitely some things that you really want to be careful about. So, although. Incorporating hippotherapy aquatics, animal assisted therapy or nature-based might be really central to your practice. Focusing solely on them in your marketing efforts can make it look like the tools are the services. And you do not want to go there. You do not want to go there with third party payers. You do not want to go there with your marketing efforts. You really, really, really want to be very clear. That your service is occupational therapy. So you can highlight the holistic benefits. You can look at the outcomes of your unique approach. That is going to be offered to clients within the realm of occupational therapy. And if you're going to be attending the Business Barn Raising coming up in June, we really take a deep dive into active strategies, passive strategies when you're marketing your business without risking these inaccuracies in how you represent yourself or having any terminology mishaps. So that's something to be aware of. Now, another common pitfall is only marketing when you need clients. And it's so easy to either let the marketing slide, or it can be a financial decision. We have clients you. Our program is full right now. And so we're not going to spend the money on marketing, but then as that cycle turns and clients are coming up on discharge. Or the season is changing, right? If you haven't listened to our seasonality podcast episode, go back and listen to that. Right. As the season changes, then. By the time you're ramping back up your marketing efforts. It'll have a gap right in your client's pipeline. And you really want to think about that. So finding a way to find a happy medium and having a steady presence in your marketing. Is really key. This allows you to have more of a low. A longer period nurturing. People who are coming into your audience, coming into your world, learning about your practice. As I said, we definitely have people who have been with us from six months to 12 months. So a half a year to a full year before they become a client. And so if we just have spurts where we're out doing outreach and marketing, and then we completely stop. Then we really lose that opportunity to bring people along with us on the journey. And have them feel ready. When they are ready to become our clients. So you can have a more reliable stream of referrals, inquiries, and conversions to clients. If you maintain some sort of marketing presence as you go along. And I know that can be hard to do, but it's really important just to have something going on. In forms of your marketing. Now, I'm going to get to it, right. Get to it already. The number one effective strategy we've had. And part of me cringes to say this, but is Facebook. So for us, Facebook has been the most effective return on investment. And I mean that by both organic, so non-paid outreach as well as paid Facebook ads. So. Two options here. Right? Is Facebook has allowed us to connect with our ideal clients. By being in their community. So I would look for a special needs group of blank, my county, right. And I joined those groups and I spend time there. And that's the downside, right? Is you're spending time there and you're contributing and you're answering people's questions and you're sharing your marketing materials. You're sharing any events that you have. You're sharing, you know, spring session, summer session coming up like this is our new schedule. You're just being there. You're being part of that community. And that has been really effective in. When people are interested in us, like they can just DM me. They sent me a message on Facebook messenger. We start to have that conversation when they're ready, they go to our EMR, create a profile and there they are. And so. It's just very easy because a lot of families. Are already on Facebook. Like that's where they are. That's where they're hanging out. They're making referrals. Like we're just starting to see. Our client's now starting to speak for us. And that is the best feeling. Ever. When you pop into a group and somebody asked about. Aquatic OT or adaptive swimming lessons. And. You see, one of your clients recommend you and they're saying like how great you are and that people should really check it out. And it's like, oh, that's amazing. I don't have to be the one in there. Hey, we offer this. And even with that ability for us to go in and say, Hey, we offer this. Most people are like, well, yeah, of course. You're going to recommend yourself, but it's even better when you start to have clients who are recommending you. So being in those groups, then I can have follow up when my client says, Hey, Epona Therapy services does this and I can follow up and say, do you have any questions? Let me like, here's my email address, right? Here's our process. I can just follow up with that person. And give them a little bit more information. So that's the organic strategy of being in groups, answering people's questions. And it's super easy if you're a mom or dad. Are ready to be in those communities. If you're not, it's definitely different. It's definitely different. If you're only coming in as a clinician. Some groups don't allow. You into the group, if you're not a parent. So that can be a barrier to that strategy, working for you and a number of groups don't allow self promotion and that's fine. You just have to read the group rules and see if there is any promotion. So some of them will have like one day a week or one day a month where you can go ahead and self promote. So you just, I keep a spreadsheet and it lets me know like which groups do which days. So when I go on kind of a marketing blitz, that set pitfall, number two, I just said, don't do. When I do do that. I go back to that spreadsheet. And I just look through, you know, which groups have, which rules. So that way I'm not violating any of the community standards because you don't want to be like that person or that business. And then Facebook ads. This is, sounds so mysterious to so many people and I'm sure I could be better at it. I am not an expert in any way, shape or form, but I. I. get along. All right. right. I am able to set up a campaign. Set up my ad sets. I set up my individual ads. I'm able to turn them on and off. I'm able to set my ad spend. I know. I know. roughly what it will cost me to get a client from an ad and we have pretty good conversions. So Facebook loves it when you keep people on Facebook. So a lot of times we found now that using the Facebook forms, Works pretty well in getting the information, then we can just download the leads at the end. And reach out to them, but most people as they go through. They're ready to. After we've answered a few questions for us go to our EMR and create a profile. And so I think part of that is they're in a certain phase of readiness to click on that link. And so by strategically running ads, we've been able to not only increase our visibility in a very local market. So that's a nice thing because you can really target within five miles or 10 miles of your town. And attract more clients into our practice. Some other strategies that have also worked for us might work for you to networking with other therapists, especially if they share a similar philosophy has been really helpful. So, working with other SLPs and PTs can be really helpful if you're an OT. Because then as long as you share again, that sort of philosophy. That you may have come up in your brand story. They can be great referral partners because clients are already going to have a know like, and trust with their provider. And so if their provider's recommending you, if you're recommending them, it works well because you already know there's a certain level of compatibility. So that's something else that I would certainly say, look into. Now we want to be able to track where our clients are coming from. So you need a reliable way to get that information. We have several touch points to gain this information in our intake process. I know where many of my leads are coming from because I've had a conversation with them on Facebook messenger that leads to a profile in our EMR. So I see that right. I see that name in Facebook messenger. and then I see it in our EMR. But sometimes we do have a new client email us, reach out to us. And in this case, How did you hear about us? That question it's on our intake forms, but then we also try to ask in person during the evaluation with a few additional questions. So we can gather information about not only like, how did they hear about us, but then why they chose to work with us. So there are other things that you can measure, like website clicks, view times. How long are people spending on your website? Conversions from Facebook or Google ads, signups from a free event, the number of email addresses you added to your list, or even referrals from word of mouth. Those are all good things to track and see. So that way eventually, you know, like I do what things work and what things don't work. And this helps you focus your time on things that really are working for your unique practice. We've figured out what works for us. So as we wrap up today's episode, remember that effective marketing is more than just promoting your services. It's really about connecting with your audience, sharing your story, providing value. I hope you'll join us next time. As we jump in with both feet to April as occupational therapy month to spotlight some great OTs. We would really love it if you could take a minute and rate us on your favorite podcast platform. I know it takes a few minutes, but it really does help us. I recently went through a 20 minute scroll on Spotify and left reviews for my most favorite weekly podcasts. So next time you find yourself doom scrolling. Stop. Take a moment and please leave us a review. Talk to you next week.