Marketing Your Therapy Practice

More than 2.4 billion people around the globe live with a health condition that would benefit from rehabilitation, and more than 1 billion are living with a mental health condition. But how do they find the right therapist among the roughly 2.8 million OTs and PTs out there, not to mention SLPs and mental health professionals?

The answer is pretty obvious: marketing.

But in our busy clinical lives, we tend to overlook the importance of this business activity. And we certainly don't spend enough time thinking about how it could drive better outcomes. We know that therapeutic alliance is one of the main drivers of therapy outcomes. Yet we rarely think of marketing as the first step in helping a patient find the therapist who is right for them.

Luckily, there's some fascinating research out there to help us think about this overlooked therapy activity.

And I'm excited to welcome to the podcast Erica Stevens, MOTR/L, CLT, CHC, CYT, owner of Thrive OT. Erica built her practice from square one, selling a niche of therapy that really made her get clear about who it's for and what the benefits are.

1. You will be able to recognize barriers identified in research that patients encounter when seeking the therapy services and therapists that are right for them.

2. You will be able to identify marketing and practice strategies that help patients find the right therapist and take the first step toward starting care.

3. You will be able to recognize how a therapy practice’s marketing strategies can reduce care gaps by complementing and overlapping with the services of other healthcare professionals.

Intro (5 minutes)

Discussion (40 minutes)

1. Tell me the story of why Thrive OT came to be?

2. How did you get your first patients?

3. How did you build your first regular referral relationship?

4. As you look back on the first years of your business, what is your advice for building a sustainable business?

5. Ok. We have this research that lists common barriers patients encounter to seeking services- let me get your general reaction to these articles, and then I want to ask specific questions.

6. You offer online booking, what impact has that had on your business?

7. Patients can dig a little and see your private pay prices- what impact does this have on your business?

8. We’ve talked about the importance of keywords and really articulating your niche. Tell me about how you choose the words that sit at the top of your website?

9. You have a healthy amount of reviews (around 23) the average is 5 stars and they look really glowing! Did you have a strategy in getting these?

10. You have some high authority sites linking to your website. Has this been intentional in developing this profile?

11. What innovation would you like to see in the therapy space in terms of helping clients find the right therapist?

Live Q&A (5-10 min)

Closing (5 min)

• A pediatric rehabilitation therapy audit study: A brief report

• A mixed methods systematic literature review of barriers and facilitators to help-seeking among women with stigmatised pelvic health symptoms

• Seeking help for perinatal depression and anxiety: a systematic review of systematic reviews from an interdependent perspective

• The Credibility of Physician Rating Websites: A Systematic Literature Review

It is the policy of OT Potential to disclose any financial and non-financial interest the provider or instructor may have in a product or service mentioned during an activity. This is to ensure that the audience is made aware of any bias of the speaker.

OT Potential pays guest speakers an honorarium for their participation, either directly or to an institution of the speaker's choosing at their request. We invite guests whose expertise often comes from practices, programs, or building products in their field. Where a speaker has a financial interest in the subject of a course, we disclose it below so you can weigh it for yourself.

OT Potential's interest in this topic: OT Potential is a Jane App affiliate and receives a commission when listeners purchase Jane App through our referral link. Jane App comes up in this course because our speaker uses it to run her practice. Jane App had no role in the content of this course. This relationship is also disclosed in the episode.

Speaker interests: Erica Stevens owns Thrive Occupational Therapy, Health & Wellness PLLC, the private practice whose marketing is the focus of this course. She uses Jane App in her practice. She has no financial relationship with Jane App.