Expanding Your Clientele: Marketing Ideas from Tony Pazzaglia

In today’s economy, staying profitable involves remaining ahead of the curve. For PT practitioners, this means getting creative with marketing to grow your practice. While healthcare is widely cited as one of the strongest and fastest-growing sectors in the American economy, it’s also one of the most competitive. If you run a smaller private physical therapy clinic, you know how hard it can be to compete with the large hospital chains. In this post, guest blogger Tony Pazzaglia — CEO and President of Terrapin Physical Therapy in Monterey, California — shares the story of how he grew his clinic through hustle, hard work and little bit of creativity:

Marketing your outpatient physical therapy clinic requires thinking outside the box.  We saw great success by beginning a Free Sports Clinic open to all local high school athletes in your market area.  Phone local orthopaedic MDs and invite them to attend as a way to expose them to groups of athletes from different schools to provide a free medical screening.  We also invited local ATCs, coaches and parents to attend. We chose Mondays from the hours of 6-8 and offered that we would have pizza and Monday night football with a casual atmosphere.  We offered a free PT consultation and treatment plans.

When appropriate, the treatment plan would include training in our HydroWorx 500 pool.

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The initial response was returned phone calls from the physicians themselves, even if we had to leave the message with the front office or physician’s assistants.  The MDs responded much differently by asking them to participate in an event that could bring them more patients as compared to bringing referral pads and bagels and asking them for referrals.  The MDs that agreed to schedule began sending patients the same day that they committed to a Monday.  Instant success!  Our Mondays have allowed constructive interaction between participating MDs and our staff.  The pool is used continuously during the 2 hours of “free”  service and has generated a buzz among the athletes while bringing different MDs out to see the pool and our services in action.

Best Wishes for a prosperous practice!

Tony Pazzaglia, PT, OCS, ATC is the CEO of Terrapin Physical Therapy, Inc.  To learn more about this unique facility please visit their website at www.terrapinphysicaltherapy.com.