For physical therapists ยท Marketing planning
A marketing plan for a physical therapy clinic.
A PT clinic has three growth levers: more referrals, more direct access patients, and more patients finishing the plan of care. The plan decides which one gets your effort first.
Or text (508) 546-9942
Slide it
You vs. John Doe Physical Therapy.
Left is your website today. Right is the one John Doe Physical Therapy has. Drag the line, then hit the button.
Crickets on the left. That is the problem.
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Illustration. Joe is made up. Your competitor is not.
What you are paying for
Marketing planning.
Before anybody designs anything, I figure out what you are selling, to whom, and what has to happen every week.
- A written position: what you sell, to whom, and why you over the alternative
- The offer, defined tightly enough to put a price on
- Which channels get effort and which get ignored
- A weekly rhythm somebody can actually keep
- What gets measured, and the threshold that triggers a decision
Next step
Book thirty minutes and I will tell you exactly what it would take.
What I would build
For a physical therapy clinic.
A written position: what you focus on, who you treat best, and why a physician or patient should choose you over the alternative. Specialties, hours, speed of access, communication with referrers. Specific, and true.
The offer, defined tightly enough to put a price on, including what a direct access first visit involves and what it costs with and without coverage. Accurate about what insurance may require, so nobody is surprised.
Which channels get effort and which get ignored. That can mean ranking referral sources by patients who complete care, building materials for the best of them, and dropping the generic outreach that never produced a patient.
What gets measured, and the threshold that triggers a decision. New evaluations, but also visits completed per plan of care, cancellations, and referral source performance. If completion slips, the plan says what happens next.
The physical therapy clinic version
Why it matters.
Picture a clinic owner treating a full caseload, managing staff and handling insurance, who also has to decide whether to visit physician offices, run Google ads, or fix the reason patients drop off after a few visits. Without a written plan, the loudest problem wins each week. With one, the owner knows this quarter is about referral relationships and plan-of-care adherence, and that ads wait.
Your own numbers drive it: where current patients came from, which referral sources send patients who complete care, and where visits fall off. Those numbers tend to point at a clear first move. Then the plan sets a weekly rhythm your team can keep, and a date to look at it honestly.
The mistake I see
Chasing new evaluations while the schedule leaks
Clinics often treat growth as a referral problem when it is partly an adherence problem. If patients are scheduled for a full plan of care and stop partway, more new evaluations just refill the leak. The plan looks at completion first. Fixing reminders and first-visit expectations can cost less than finding the next patient.
How it goes
For a physical therapy clinic, step by step.
→ Keep scrolling. It moves sideways.
One long conversation
Your numbers, your best customers, the jobs you wish you had more of.
Narrow it
Most plans fail from doing six things badly. I pick two.
Write it down
One page. If it needs ten, it will not survive a busy month.
Set the review
A date to look at it honestly and change it.
Step five is you.
The free Receipt shows what your physical therapy clinic should fix first. Free, no card.
Print my Receipt →
Questions
What physical therapists ask.
Should we hire a physician liaison?
It depends on how many referral relationships you have and how much time you can give them. Before hiring, the plan identifies which offices already send patients and which could. Sometimes a few well-prepared visits by the owner, backed by good materials and reliable progress notes, do what a full-time role would.
How do we compete with hospital-owned PT?
Speed, convenience and attention. Hospital systems have built-in referral pipelines, but they cannot always match an independent clinic on how fast a patient starts or on seeing the same therapist every visit. If those are your strengths, say so plainly. The plan builds the marketing around what you actually do better.
Does the plan cover OT and speech therapy?
It can, and it should if those services are part of the clinic. They tend to have different referral sources, like pediatricians or schools for speech, and different patient questions. The plan decides whether they get their own channel effort or ride along with the PT marketing for now.
Everything else
Other services for physical therapists.
Same service
Marketing planning for other businesses.
Where I work
Southeastern MA, Worcester County, Cape Cod, RI and NH.
Start here
See what your customers see.
The Receipt looks your physical therapy clinic up the way a customer would and itemizes what is costing you calls. It is free. Or skip it and book fifteen minutes with me.
Or text (508) 546-9942