June 26, 2025 • 40 mins
In this episode of the Healthy, Wealthy and Smart podcast, host Dr. Karen Litzy welcomes Neil Trickett, a physical therapist and former private practice owner who has transitioned into a marketing guru. Neil shares his journey from being a physical therapist to leading a successful multi-seven-figure marketing agency, Practice Promotions. He discusses his passion for helping PT owners grow their businesses and achieve their desired lifestyles. The conversation highlights the importance of effective marketing strategies in the physical therapy field and provides valuable insights for clinic owners seeking to increase patient volume. Tune in to learn helpful tips on how to leverage marketing for your practice's success!
Time Stamps:
[00:01:20] Physical therapy career journey.
[00:06:40] Working with your spouse.
[00:10:03] Business partnership dynamics.
[00:13:21] Marketing for healthcare practitioners.
[00:15:10] Patient relationship marketing strategies.
[00:22:07] Marketing audit for practices.
[00:23:11] Online discoverability in healthcare.
[00:28:04] Website design and patient marketing.
[00:32:18] Marketing investment and metrics.
[00:36:20] Marketing planning and budgeting.
[00:39:00] Learning and executing quickly.More About Neil Trickett:
Neil is a physical therapist, former private practice owner of 8 years, and CEO of Practice Promotions, the leader in marketing strategy, digital marketing, websites, and print marketing for the PT industry. With 20 years of real-world experience, Neil has helped over a thousand PT clinic locations across the US and Canada, implement the right marketing strategies and systems to exponentially grow their new patient numbers.
Neil and his wife, Amy co-owned their successful physical therapy practice in Boynton Beach, FL for 8 years, developing marketing strategies and systems along the way. He has dedicated his career to helping elevate the profession of physical therapy in the public, by empowering rehabilitation practices to successfully market themselves to their local communities.
Resources from this Episode:
Practice Promotions on Facebook
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Healthy, Wealthy and Smart podcast. I
am your host, Dr. Karen Litzy, owner of Karen Litzy Physical Therapy
in New York City. And today I'm very excited to have
fellow physical therapist on the show today to
talk about his journey moving from physical therapist
to private practice owner to now marketing
(00:26):
guru. We could say that, right? Can we say marketing guru? Is
that okay? Yeah, we'll say it. Let's take it right. So
I'm really happy to have on the program today, Neil trickett
Neil is a physical therapist former private practice owner of
eight years and CEO of practice promotions, a
multi seven figure marketing agency that has helped hundreds of
(00:47):
PT and rehabilitation clinics grow their patient volume
with powerful PT marketing. Neil is passionate about helping
PT owners grow their businesses and build the life that
they want to lead. So Neil, welcome to the podcast. I'm
(01:07):
I'm happy to have you. Now, before we get into all of that, let's
give the listeners a little bit more about your background.
Yeah, so I remember, well, for the
listeners out there, you probably can't tell, but I'm actually from England
originally. But came here to, yes, I know, everybody gets
(01:31):
the surprise face. Yeah,
so originally born in England. I've had the blessed life to travel the
world a lot, lived in Santiago, Chile, lived in the Solomon Islands in
the South Pacific. And then we
came up to South Florida. when I was about 12 or so and
I went to high school here. And I remember in high school, my
(01:52):
guidance counselor was like, well, what do you want to do? And I was like,
I don't know. You know, I like medicine. I like science, like things like
that. And then it was one of those where I don't want to
go to school for eight years. So she's like, have
you heard of physical therapy? I'm like, no, what's that? So she told me a little bit about that.
And then I went and volunteered at a few places and checked it out. I'm
like, this looks pretty interesting. So then I went to school
(02:15):
at FIU, Florida International University in Miami. And
that was a very, very great school. Lots
of hands on, loved it. And lots of internships
and different experiences there. So I really got a feel for what
the profession was like, everything from sports medicine to
working in hospitals, prosthetic care, pediatrics, you name
(02:37):
it. So it was really cool. And then after that, graduated and
had some great internships in the Navy, got to the Naval Hospital
there and experienced the military side of physical therapy
care. and also outpatient acute
care. And then I ended up when my wife and I decided to get married,
we went up to upstate New York near Saratoga. And
(03:00):
while I was there, I got to be part of a clinic where
the owner had done a lot of osteopath training. And it
was fascinating to me because it was just a more holistic
way of looking at the body and the different systems, you know, respiratory
and endocrine and all these other systems that we don't typically think of
as much the PT musculoskeletal side.
(03:22):
And then so I got very interested in that. At the same time,
we decided, hey, we need we need to get away from the cold. Let's go
back to Florida. My wife couldn't stand the cold anymore. So we went back to
Florida. And that's, we said, Hey, you know what, we can start up our own place. So
that's when we started up our own PT clinic down there.
At the same time, I started going to the Canadian College of osteopathy. uh,
(03:43):
and learn the osteopathic side of things too. Um, but
yeah, and then we start off our own clinic in Florida. We had that for about eight years, definitely
learned through the school of hard knocks, what it was like to run a business. Um,
but then we, we got with a great business group and started to learn a
lot about, you know, operations and finance and marketing
and all the things that you need to learn as a small business owner,
(04:05):
uh, that they don't teach you in PT school. They teach you how to be a great
PT, but they don't teach you how to run a business. Correct. Yeah. To
learn that and we implemented that and grew that up to
a point where. We're about a seven-figure practice and
then transitioned out of that because we wanted to relocate what they call
in Florida, half back. So you come down from the
(04:27):
Northeast to Florida for a few years, and then you go halfway back to
Oh, that's funny. Okay. Okay. Oh, that's funny. Now I have one question.
Did you have a British accent or did you never have a British accent
I still have a British accent when I'm with family. It
(04:50):
was one of those that was very useful throughout the
Got it. Got it. Made you stand out from the crowd a little bit.
Okay. So you, you did talk about,
you know, you started your own practice down in Florida. So
(05:11):
when you started your own practice, I'm
curious to know what had to shift for you from
being staff PT, or even if you were, I
don't know if you were like a managing a PT clinic, but
not your own. So talk a little bit about the mind shift that needed
to happen from going from PT to business owner and
(05:33):
Yeah. You know, I've, I've talked with so many practice owners
and usually hear the story of like, I was so tired
of working the way that someone else wanted me to
work and I wanted to be my own boss, right? For me, it wasn't so much that.
I was actually very inspired by the gentleman that ran
the practice that I worked for in Albany, New
(05:55):
York. His name was John and super
nice guy, very friendly, very outgoing and not much older
than me. And so I was like, wow, you know, this guy's being successful.
He's running a great practice. Like I can do that. Right. Kind
of. It showed me what was possible, planted
the seed and was a little bit more of an inspiration rather than I
(06:16):
don't really want to work this way anymore. You know, so for me, it was a
little bit of a different journey. And. And
so that's like, OK, I'm going to take the leap. I'm going to
take the initiative. And, you know, I knew
that we could keep it lean and mean to start off with because my
wife's a PT. So, you know, we can just make it happen, the two of
(06:40):
And so what's that like working with your wife? So you
can maybe pass this along to anyone who's listening who might be
thinking, hmm, I don't know if that's something like, did it help
the marriage? Was it not great for the marriage? Did it make you stronger? How
Totally. Yeah. And it's one of those things, again, like you talk to a lot of people who
have tried working together with their spouse or partner and they're
(07:05):
like, oh, I can never do that. Right. I think it's
not for everybody. Right. And for me, I've
been very lucky in that I found my
wife, who is very smart, very talented. And
I think we compliment each other a lot, right? So there's
(07:25):
things that we agree on and there's things that we disagree on. And there's things
that we bring differently to the table. She's
very thoughtful, more cautious, likes
to plan things. I'm like, let's just go for it.
I don't know what the heck I'm doing, but I'll figure it out as I get there, right? And
then I'm thinking about, oh,
(07:46):
the business and the products and, you know, how are we
going to market this thing? And then, you know, she's thinking about the care and, you
know, the operations and taking care of the patients and all this kind of stuff. So it
was very good for us to work together. Yes, there was
definitely times where it was hard and we had to work through things. But
I don't think I would definitely be in the place I am today
(08:08):
without her because we've worked together for pretty
much all of our marriage. You know, we got married and
then basically like a year later,
we were starting our business together, you know, like age
25, 26. Wow. Yeah. So we've worked together through our
business, our practice. And then once we sold
(08:31):
that and we started up practice promotions, the marketing agency, it
wasn't too long before she started helping out in that. And then,
you know, she's been the managing partner with me since then, growing
that up, you know, so it's been a very interesting growth.
I think it's helped us grow. as people. It's
helped us grow in our marriage. And, you
(08:53):
know, you have to be able to, um, you
know, be able to, I think it makes you a better listener. Like you have to really listen and
be willing to listen when you have a business
Yeah. And being able to relate to things too. Like, cause sometimes if
you're in very different fields, you don't necessarily can
(09:16):
talk to each other about work as well. But if you're together
Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah. I have a couple of friends who, you
know, are husband and wife and they're both PTs and
it really works, you know, to your point, they compliment each
other. They, They're on the same page for most
(09:37):
things. So it's been, it's been really great. But
I think what's, what piece of advice would you have to, let's
say there are people listening right now who they're a husband and
wife. They want to start a business together. What piece of advice would
If you're going to start a business together, I would, I
would definitely map out first who's going
(09:59):
to be in charge of what. because
the friction comes when the other person
thinks that they're doing that thing that you think they're doing, right?
But if it's like, okay, well, I'm gonna be in charge of marketing, I'm gonna
be in charge of billing or whatever it is, right? The other person gives
their input for sure, but like, you're the decision
(10:21):
on that area. So I think that's the best advice I would give is like,
just try to be more planful with what areas
I think that's great advice and I've actually heard that
from a friend of mine who's a psychologist. She uses that when
she's working with couples just to break down like household tasks, right?
(10:42):
So like if you're in charge of taking out the trash, it
means like you're in charge of taking the trash out
of the trash can, going to every trash bin, taking it
out to wherever the garbage has to go, putting a new one in. Like
you have to make sure that what you're in charge of is everything and the other
person needs to like, you know, kind of stay,
(11:06):
Yeah. It's relationships. Right. And I think totally, obviously
it's a very different dynamic of a relationship, but you still need to
carry the same concept over with your employees or
people that your coworkers with, right. Because you got to, okay, this
is your role. These are the responsibilities you have. I think, uh,
good employers definitely, uh,
(11:30):
outline and are very good about reinforcing your
accountability, your responsibilities and let you go for it
and give you attaboys when you're really hitting
those responsibilities. So to some degrees, there's
some similarities there between how you would do that as a
(11:52):
Absolutely. I just had today a
bit of an in-service with a woman
who is part of
the HR team at Columbia University, University Medical
Center. And she was saying kind of
exactly that, like when you're talking with your employees, you
(12:13):
want to reinforce their job description. with
them. And you want to make sure that they know,
let's say it's a new hire, what are their responsibilities for 30 days,
60 days, 90 days and beyond. And you're looking at, to your
point, setting out those expectations, looking at what their
job description is and reinforcing that even
(12:35):
if it's a year from now from their hiring, keep reinforcing
that along with like the values and expectations of
your company. So Yeah. You're right on point. Right
Totally. Totally. Okay. So you sell your practice,
(12:55):
right? And you start practice promotions, which
is, like we said, a marketing agency. So let's get into marketing.
Specifically for healthcare practitioners, we're both physical therapists,
we can talk specifically about physical therapy. But
what are some things that physical therapy owners get
(13:16):
right and maybe get wrong when it
Yeah, I think we've got a very unique business. And
so we've got to leverage that in a unique way. If you think about the
experience of a patient when they come to us versus
going to, say, a physician's group, You know, it's a very different
(13:37):
experience. They're seeing us for a long time and
they get to know us. We get to know them. Uh, so one
thing that we usually have, if you're doing things
right from your service, your operations, how you're treating patients,
how you're taking care of them in the clinic is
you can develop incredible word of mouth. Uh,
(13:58):
so the, you know, the, the top clinics that I see have done very,
very well at how they run
their operations to create the best patient experience, to
develop that feeling of belonging to the
patient, right. Leveraging that in their marketing. Uh,
so that, that I would say is one of the critical things that. Clinics
(14:21):
who really get it right. Dive into that. And
I would say this if you're listening out there in any business, but especially
in kind of health care is being able to leverage
that relationship, leverage that story. And if you
think about all the people that come into our clinic, we
have incredible stories to tell, transformational stories.
(14:43):
And if you look at what's on TV, if you look at movies, it's
like that whole, everybody gravitates towards stories, right?
Hearing these like underdog stories and these transformational stories
and coming back from incredible, you know, disabilities. And
we have that every day in our clinics. It's amazing, right? But
(15:04):
where clinics may fall short is that they don't have mechanisms in
place to really capture those stories and
then promote them to the world. And that's what really
takes you to that next level is the better you
get at collecting those stories. That's going to be reviews, testimonials,
videos, you know, you name it. But we're really taking those
(15:26):
stories from within the clinic and being able to promote that
out, whether it's on social email websites, you
name it. And then as far as where I've seen clinics make
mistakes. I think the one biggest mistake that I see for, for
practices is that they don't leverage those relationships.
Well, they may have gotten amazing results for
(15:48):
the patient while they were in the clinic. And then the worst thing you can hear
is like, that's great. I'm so fantastic to hear that you're doing
much better, Mrs. Smith. I hope you never have to see you again.
Right? Worst thing you could possibly say, you know, I
want basically want to be that physical therapist for life. Right?
Right. And so we have to think of it that
(16:09):
way. And we have to build that lifetime value with
our patient. And how are we keeping communication with
them? How are we giving them useful tips and advice and keeping
in their mailbox and their email
inbox and on their social feeds and being that continued
expert? And they're like, oh yeah, I had a great experience there. And oh, you know what? My mom has
(16:31):
that problem. Maybe I should send her there. So that's what
we need to keep fostering. And so the clinics that, that make mistakes is
that you usually don't put much effort into that patient marketing
aspect. They go for the new patients all the time, but they don't pay attention to
Okay. So what, what can we do
to continue to foster those
(16:53):
relationships? without being
like, oh, I don't want to bother people too much. I don't want, do you know
what I mean? So there's like, you don't want to bombard people, but you
just want to be like a little, hey, how are you kind
Absolutely. That's such a common concern
(17:14):
that we're talking to our clients is that, oh, I don't want to bug them.
I'm like, how many emails do you think they get in their inbox in
a day? It's hundreds for a lot of people. How
many things do they see on their Facebook feed or
Instagram feed in a day? So you got
to realize that the average person is seeing about 3,000 marketing messages
(17:35):
a day. and you're not going to bug people. Now
you can bug people if you don't give them things of value and
you're constantly asking things from them. That's
annoying, right? But what can we do to provide value? And
the big thing there is we've got a lot of advice. We've got
a lot of knowledge that we can help people with. And
(17:56):
so, Hey, someone came to you for an ankle sprain. But
how many times have you been treating someone for an ankle sprain and
someone on the next, um, length is
having their neck worked on. Oh, I didn't know you guys treated next. Oh,
yeah. Next edX, you know, all kinds of stuff we help with. Yeah,
totally. So in our marketing, we need to
(18:16):
be giving tips and advice and, and
it can be on different body parts, right? For sure. Uh, and
nutrition and there's all kinds of things that we're doing today in our
clinics. Um, But that's the key thing is provide
value. And people want knowledge, tips, advice that they can share with
others or use for themselves. And that, if
(18:38):
you're producing that even a couple of times a week
And let's say you're a
practice owner, you're a solopreneur, you don't have a
big team, maybe it's just a couple of people. How
are we supposed to get all this done? Right. How
(19:00):
are we supposed to come up with marketing emails
once a week and treat our patients
and pay the bills and worry about finances and
keep your employees happy? It's a lot of work, right?
So how, how are we supposed to
(19:21):
come up with a marketing email, and
I don't want to say marketing, maybe a relationship email once a week, or
maybe it's once a month, or once every two weeks. What
Yeah, so I think it comes back to what
are your ambitions as a business owner?
If you're comfortable in a small business
(19:44):
and that's fine, whatever your goals are for that,
just know that you're going to obviously wear a lot of hats. If
you have ambitions to grow bigger and have a larger team,
maybe even have multiple locations, whatever may be there, The
way that I look at it is you have to promote bigger than you are.
(20:05):
So if you want to level up to that next level
of business where you might have multiple therapists
or you might have multiple people working for you. Uh, and
then that next level of business where you have maybe multiple locations
or multiple managers like you have to Look
at your plan of what that next level of marketing is
(20:28):
going to look like and what needs to get done At that level
and then do it. So if you're very small Yeah, you
have to You have to carve out a little bit of time, right?
It doesn't have to be a lot but just enough where I
think if you attack it like, hey, I'm going to spend
20 minutes here one day, 20 minutes another day, that's exhausting. You're
(20:50):
better off just carving out, you know, a couple hours a week, sit
down, plan out what you're going to work on for the month, and
then hammer out the, you know, the themes of, hey,
I've got these results or these reviews in for patients. I'm
going to do a theme around, you know, tips for back pain. I'm
going to use chat GPT, give you some ideas. That's
(21:12):
perfect. And then let me have it help me write a
few things out. I could get a couple of emails out this way.
I could redo that in a blog on my website. I
could do a couple of posts on social media about it. So it doesn't have
to be this huge daunting marketing extravaganza. You
(21:34):
Do you have any advice on, let's say you are
marketing, it's so-so, you're growing,
maybe not as fast as you want to, you're getting patients, maybe not as many as
you want to. Do you have any advice on how to do maybe a
marketing audit for your practice and what are things
to look at, metrics-wise, content, etc.?
(21:57):
Absolutely. Yeah. In fact, I wrote a book on it. It's called Market to Grow. And
in that book, I outlined some of the core areas that I've just researched
over the decades, working with thousands of practices. And
so some of the key areas here for new patients
is first looking at, okay, what
(22:19):
So it's important to develop physician relationships and network relationships.
That's a key, but sometimes it can be really hard to bust into those
Especially now that a lot of, um, large
hospital systems are referring to
within, right? It's much harder for,
(22:42):
not harder, but doctors are less likely to
refer outside of the system.
I saw a statistic the other day, I think it was about 74% of
physicians now work for either a
hospital system or a corporate group. So you've only
got 26% that are in private practice by themselves, which
(23:06):
10 years ago is probably like 40% worked for a hospital system.
huge shift in that area. So in
our world, in the PT and rehabilitation industry, it's
really about going direct to consumer now. And so one of
the key things you can do there is really, first off, look at how
your online discoverability is. How easy is it to
(23:28):
find you? And if we think about patient behavior, Over
65% of people are going to go to Dr. Google first to
research anything about getting help
before they ever make a phone call. So that's the number one place that
you really want to work to get found is on Google
(23:49):
first. And you will definitely want to work on how you rank
up in maps. You want to rank, Google Ads is
a very easy way to
get things started. It costs a little bit of money to advertise. It
doesn't have to be a lot, but it takes a little bit to get you there at the top. But
there's a lot of stuff that you can do yourself, especially in your
(24:13):
Super simple. There is first off, get pictures,
right? Great pictures of working with patients,
of course, with written permission, photo permission, things like that. But get
pictures of what it's like to be there and then
have that in your Google business profile. Of course, have all
your contact information in there. Question and answers. You
(24:35):
can put a lot of your own questions and answers in there. Common things that you would hear.
You can make it loaded too for keywords like physical therapy
or whatever your business is. You can connect your social
profiles in there. You can post in your Google business profile. So
it doesn't take a lot of tech savviness in there,
but you can put a little bit of effort in that and it can make a big difference in getting you found,
(24:57):
right? So your online discoverability is really key. And
then Google does look at your social profiles too
and how people interact with that. So you have to kind of
realize like where are people going to find me online? So am
I serving an older demographic? Well, maybe I want to pay
more attention to Facebook. I'm working with a middle-aged group
(25:19):
and maybe some younger demographics. I'm going to be in Instagram, right?
Or very young, I'm going to be in TikTok, you know, but most people
are going to be in Facebook because our bodies break down after middle
age, right? So Facebook and Instagram is
kind of where we're at. So again, posting things in there routinely doesn't
have to be crazy. Google's going to notice that
(25:40):
and start to show you more. So that really helps overall
with your online discoverability. And then one of the key investments in
your business is really your website. You have to think of your
website as your online storefront, right? So
if you're walking by a storefront and it doesn't look
that great, or it's kind of hard to get into, you're not
(26:01):
going to get people in the door, right? But if it looks amazing, it
piques people's interest and they make it very easy for people to come
in the door, you're going to get a lot more business in
the door. So that's what we call website conversions and it's
really looking at how many visitors you get to
how many people actually book an appointment or schedule an appointment with you. So
(26:22):
for example, most websites convert about 2% of
the people that come to them into actual scheduled appointments.
Now, if you were able to increase,
let's just say, for example, you get a thousand people visiting
your website a month, 2% gives you 20 new
(26:46):
So if I was able to improve how
people behaved on my website and I could see how they were behaving and I could
get them to pay more attention, stay around longer, read more of my stuff. I'm
much more likely to get them to take action. So just
a 2% increase in conversions doubles my
new patients from 20 to 40. And there's things
(27:09):
that like we do, for example, we have AI software
that helps our graphic designers mimic how people's eyes travel
around the screen. So you can design things and colors and all kinds
of stuff to make people's eyes track. And there's
also things called heat maps. So that actually tracks how people
scroll and click on your website. So then you can actually
(27:31):
say, hey, you know what, people are not really scrolling past this one section.
Maybe I need to redesign that a little bit. Get people to stay longer
on my website. So there's all things like things that you can do there.
Again, that's stuff that you can just have uh you know pay
someone to do kind of look at help you out with totally yeah but
it can make a big difference at the end of the day people coming in and then lastly we
(27:52):
talked about it already but that patient marketing component right
making sure that as you build a list of
people to your customers that you keep on
Right. Yeah. And I love, I'm so happy that
you brought up the website design because I don't
know about you, but I have seen some healthcare websites, some
(28:14):
PT websites that I go on. You don't even know
Like, like, you know, everything above the fold is like nonsense.
So like if you're on there and you don't have kind of who you
are, what you do in a way to connect, that's all above the fold. I
think you're I don't think that's good. I'm not experts in websites, but
(28:37):
And it comes back to, again, just that if you understand the
importance of that being how most people
will will find you and then
also decide to come to you. Then
you would put more effort and more investment into it. I think people
(29:00):
Because it should be a whole vibe. Right?
Like it should be your vibe. Like it's, you
know, the, the way things, like you said, the way things are laid out, the
colors, the copy, everything. I think it
And one mistake I see, again, this comes back to just, I think,
understanding how important it really is, but the clinics that
(29:23):
put the effort into getting good professional
photography at the beginning and put that within their website, they
do amazing with their results. But the clinics that just
don't have any of that and they just have to have stock images up there,
Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. It and, you
(29:45):
know, investing in a photo shoot now is not as expensive as
it used to be. Remember that like 10, 15 years
ago, you'd be paying like three thousand plus dollars for a
Yeah. So different times where you are, but right, right, right. Three
to 500 bucks, I think is realistic. Yeah, I'd say, you know, at least once
a year, have a professional photographer come through, get
(30:08):
some fresh headshots, get lots of images of you
treating patients and yeah, age them in a way that makes it
look comfortable and soothing. Don't be like cranking on someone's leg. That's
(30:31):
Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's like the, the
food commercials, right? It's never real food. It's like, you know,
the, the cream is glue and right. Right. Right. Cheese
Exactly. Like at least make it seem like people are somewhat happy
to be there. You know, it doesn't, you don't have to be like high-fiving
(30:56):
at least, you know, make it look like and realistic
So it's like if you're showing a back treatment, like you don't want to
just have like, you know, two little fingers on there and like smiling to
the camera, like that's not quite what we do, you know?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you want to Again,
this is all part of like that planning with the pictures and the photography is
(31:20):
looking at, okay, well, who am I serving? And what type
of pictures would I have? So, you know, if you're going to have a pelvic health
program, well, it's got to be very soothing, look like
private, you know, right, intimate there. So
it's, you know, it's, it's not going to be shocking to someone. But
if it's a sports performance, well, that's going to be a very different type
(31:40):
of photography, right? Yeah, action, act and cutting edge and feel,
you know, kind of an animation kind of feel to it. You got
to know who you're marketing, what kind of pictures, what kind of feel you're going to
Right. As with all marketing, know who your ideal
customer is. If you don't, it will
(32:01):
Yeah. All right. So as we start to kind of wrap things up
here, what haven't we covered that
you are like, the listeners really need to
know this. This is super important when it comes to promoting
Yeah, absolutely. I would say the one thing I have a
(32:22):
lot of conversations with people on and changing their mindset is
really when it comes to metrics and
your budget. So I see people time
and time again make the mistake of not investing enough
in their marketing and they wonder why they struggle. And
you have to realize your marketing is the throttle to your engine, your
(32:46):
practice engine, your business engine. And so it's
what brings people in, right? It's what brings people into your business.
So you have to have enough in place, enough energy
to be driving those people in. So as far as metrics, you
wanna be looking at your customer acquisition costs, that's primary. So
that for physical therapy practice, for example, you wanna
(33:07):
get that below a hundred. You know, if you get that down to like $50 to
get someone in, that's fantastic. And that's basically just all your marketing expenses.
Even if you have a marketing director, you lump their salary in there and
divide that by the number of new patients or new people, new customers that
you get. you know, in a month, and that gives you your,
your customer acquisition costs. And then you want to look at your customer lifetime value
(33:29):
is okay. So if I, for physical
therapy, you have someone come in, say 10 or 12 visits, let's
say an average case might be like $1,000 for their
care. So it's your job to make sure they come for their visits to get fully better
and then you want to market enough
to them. How can you get them to send another person for
(33:53):
referral and how can you get them back for care when they need you?
And that can increase your customer lifetime value of
that patient to say two, three, four, $5,000. Right. Others.
So that's another key metric to be looking at is your customer lifetime value
with it. And then lastly, it's your budget. And so
Small Business Association really does
(34:16):
research across all types of industries, and it can vary between
like 5% to 15%. It
really depends on where you are, where your business is. And if you want big growth,
you're going to have to put more percentage of what you make in
revenue towards your monthly budget. But
(34:36):
Yeah, and that's actually pretty common
among physical, when you talk to physical therapy owners, even in,
oh, what's that? It'll come to me, it'll come to me later. It's
a big sort of, I think
comes out twice a year and it's an analysis
(35:03):
Maybe. Yeah. Maybe that's it. Yeah. Where they break down
like how much, like what those percentages are. And it is shockingly
low. It is like, I was going to, I was going to say, isn't it like
Yeah, so if you're spending like 2% now
and you have, okay, I wanna double my business in a year. Well, you can't
(35:25):
keep spending 2% and expect to double your business, right? You
gotta allocate some more funds towards advertising, marketing, whatever you
need to get to that goal that you wanna have. So that's
one of the key things is when you're looking at your planning, am I spending enough
here? What is my customer acquisition cost? What is my customer lifetime
value? If you understand those metrics, you're half
(35:47):
Yeah, no, that's great. This is great advice for
people because most business owners, we really like our numbers and
we like our spreadsheets and we like to know what
things cost and how that then can hopefully increase
And that's what all of this is meant to do. So this is
(36:08):
great. So marketing expense, customer lifetime value budget.
Those are three big line items that we really want to have a
Perfect. Okay. So what are the
big takeaways here that you want people, and it
(36:29):
can be a 30,000 foot view, or it can be as,
as targeted as you want, but what are the takeaways that you
Yeah, I want, I would really like them to Make
sure that they're spending enough time to plan in your business because
it's so easy to get bogged down in the day to day. Totally. The
(36:52):
first thing you have to do is carve out time. So even if
it's a couple of hours, carve out time and look
at where you are with your current marketing, where you want to go, plan something out.
Look at your customers, right? So am
I doing enough marketing to my present and
past customers? That's a big area to focus on right there.
(37:14):
How's my online discoverability look? Let me just go explore on
Google and check some things out. How do I look to a prospective customer out
there? How does my website look and feel if I put myself in
the mindset of a customer? You know, that can make a big difference. And
then am I taking enough of the stories from
within my business and telling those in my marketing, because
(37:36):
that will really transform your marketing. And of course, measuring
Right. I think that's great. A great way to almost
end the podcast. But before we go, where can
people find you if they have questions,
comments, they want to learn more about practice promotions, where
(37:58):
Absolutely. Yeah. Practicepromotions.net. We have tons of free
advice, blogs, downloads, you name it. You can even get our book
there or you can get our book on markettogrow.net. That's like the
numeral number two. So markettogrow.net. You
Yeah. And for all of you listening, if you go to the show notes in
(38:20):
this episode on whatever platform you're listening to right
now, just scroll down. We'll have links to the website. We'll
have links to get your free market to grow book,
which is very generous. And we'll have links to all
of the social media for Neil and for practice promotions.
And one click will take you right there. So last question.
(38:43):
Uh, given where you are now in your life and career, what advice would
you give to your 20 year old self? I would assume
You really should have kept the accent, but anyway, what other advice would
Well, yes, yeah, I totally understand that. I
(39:04):
would give myself some advice in that, if
I'm learning things not to take
so long with it, try to learn and
execute and implement quicker. That would be my big
advice there, because it's very easy to learn things and then it takes forever to
get something executed or implemented, but if you just go for it, You
(39:28):
I think that's great advice. Uh, so Neil, thank you
so much for coming on the podcast today. I really appreciate your
And everyone else out there listening. Thank you so
much for tuning in. Have a great couple of days and stay healthy,
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Healthy, Wealthy and Smart podcast. I
am your host, Dr. Karen Litzy, owner of Karen Litzy Physical Therapy
in New York City. And today I'm very excited to have
fellow physical therapist on the show today to
talk about his journey moving from physical therapist
to private practice owner to now marketing
(00:26):
guru. We could say that, right? Can we say marketing guru? Is
that okay? Yeah, we'll say it. Let's take it right. So
I'm really happy to have on the program today, Neil trickett
Neil is a physical therapist former private practice owner of
eight years and CEO of practice promotions, a
multi seven figure marketing agency that has helped hundreds of
(00:47):
PT and rehabilitation clinics grow their patient volume
with powerful PT marketing. Neil is passionate about helping
PT owners grow their businesses and build the life that
they want to lead. So Neil, welcome to the podcast. I'm
(01:07):
I'm happy to have you. Now, before we get into all of that, let's
give the listeners a little bit more about your background.
Yeah, so I remember, well, for the
listeners out there, you probably can't tell, but I'm actually from England
originally. But came here to, yes, I know, everybody gets
(01:31):
the surprise face. Yeah,
so originally born in England. I've had the blessed life to travel the
world a lot, lived in Santiago, Chile, lived in the Solomon Islands in
the South Pacific. And then we
came up to South Florida. when I was about 12 or so and
I went to high school here. And I remember in high school, my
(01:52):
guidance counselor was like, well, what do you want to do? And I was like,
I don't know. You know, I like medicine. I like science, like things like
that. And then it was one of those where I don't want to
go to school for eight years. So she's like, have
you heard of physical therapy? I'm like, no, what's that? So she told me a little bit about that.
And then I went and volunteered at a few places and checked it out. I'm
like, this looks pretty interesting. So then I went to school
(02:15):
at FIU, Florida International University in Miami. And
that was a very, very great school. Lots
of hands on, loved it. And lots of internships
and different experiences there. So I really got a feel for what
the profession was like, everything from sports medicine to
working in hospitals, prosthetic care, pediatrics, you name
(02:37):
it. So it was really cool. And then after that, graduated and
had some great internships in the Navy, got to the Naval Hospital
there and experienced the military side of physical therapy
care. and also outpatient acute
care. And then I ended up when my wife and I decided to get married,
we went up to upstate New York near Saratoga. And
(03:00):
while I was there, I got to be part of a clinic where
the owner had done a lot of osteopath training. And it
was fascinating to me because it was just a more holistic
way of looking at the body and the different systems, you know, respiratory
and endocrine and all these other systems that we don't typically think of
as much the PT musculoskeletal side.
(03:22):
And then so I got very interested in that. At the same time,
we decided, hey, we need we need to get away from the cold. Let's go
back to Florida. My wife couldn't stand the cold anymore. So we went back to
Florida. And that's, we said, Hey, you know what, we can start up our own place. So
that's when we started up our own PT clinic down there.
At the same time, I started going to the Canadian College of osteopathy. uh,
(03:43):
and learn the osteopathic side of things too. Um, but
yeah, and then we start off our own clinic in Florida. We had that for about eight years, definitely
learned through the school of hard knocks, what it was like to run a business. Um,
but then we, we got with a great business group and started to learn a
lot about, you know, operations and finance and marketing
and all the things that you need to learn as a small business owner,
(04:05):
uh, that they don't teach you in PT school. They teach you how to be a great
PT, but they don't teach you how to run a business. Correct. Yeah. To
learn that and we implemented that and grew that up to
a point where. We're about a seven-figure practice and
then transitioned out of that because we wanted to relocate what they call
in Florida, half back. So you come down from the
(04:27):
Northeast to Florida for a few years, and then you go halfway back to
Oh, that's funny. Okay. Okay. Oh, that's funny. Now I have one question.
Did you have a British accent or did you never have a British accent
I still have a British accent when I'm with family. It
(04:50):
was one of those that was very useful throughout the
Got it. Got it. Made you stand out from the crowd a little bit.
Okay. So you, you did talk about,
you know, you started your own practice down in Florida. So
(05:11):
when you started your own practice, I'm
curious to know what had to shift for you from
being staff PT, or even if you were, I
don't know if you were like a managing a PT clinic, but
not your own. So talk a little bit about the mind shift that needed
to happen from going from PT to business owner and
(05:33):
Yeah. You know, I've, I've talked with so many practice owners
and usually hear the story of like, I was so tired
of working the way that someone else wanted me to
work and I wanted to be my own boss, right? For me, it wasn't so much that.
I was actually very inspired by the gentleman that ran
the practice that I worked for in Albany, New
(05:55):
York. His name was John and super
nice guy, very friendly, very outgoing and not much older
than me. And so I was like, wow, you know, this guy's being successful.
He's running a great practice. Like I can do that. Right. Kind
of. It showed me what was possible, planted
the seed and was a little bit more of an inspiration rather than I
(06:16):
don't really want to work this way anymore. You know, so for me, it was a
little bit of a different journey. And. And
so that's like, OK, I'm going to take the leap. I'm going to
take the initiative. And, you know, I knew
that we could keep it lean and mean to start off with because my
wife's a PT. So, you know, we can just make it happen, the two of
(06:40):
And so what's that like working with your wife? So you
can maybe pass this along to anyone who's listening who might be
thinking, hmm, I don't know if that's something like, did it help
the marriage? Was it not great for the marriage? Did it make you stronger? How
Totally. Yeah. And it's one of those things, again, like you talk to a lot of people who
have tried working together with their spouse or partner and they're
(07:05):
like, oh, I can never do that. Right. I think it's
not for everybody. Right. And for me, I've
been very lucky in that I found my
wife, who is very smart, very talented. And
I think we compliment each other a lot, right? So there's
(07:25):
things that we agree on and there's things that we disagree on. And there's things
that we bring differently to the table. She's
very thoughtful, more cautious, likes
to plan things. I'm like, let's just go for it.
I don't know what the heck I'm doing, but I'll figure it out as I get there, right? And
then I'm thinking about, oh,
(07:46):
the business and the products and, you know, how are we
going to market this thing? And then, you know, she's thinking about the care and, you
know, the operations and taking care of the patients and all this kind of stuff. So it
was very good for us to work together. Yes, there was
definitely times where it was hard and we had to work through things. But
I don't think I would definitely be in the place I am today
(08:08):
without her because we've worked together for pretty
much all of our marriage. You know, we got married and
then basically like a year later,
we were starting our business together, you know, like age
25, 26. Wow. Yeah. So we've worked together through our
business, our practice. And then once we sold
(08:31):
that and we started up practice promotions, the marketing agency, it
wasn't too long before she started helping out in that. And then,
you know, she's been the managing partner with me since then, growing
that up, you know, so it's been a very interesting growth.
I think it's helped us grow. as people. It's
helped us grow in our marriage. And, you
(08:53):
know, you have to be able to, um, you
know, be able to, I think it makes you a better listener. Like you have to really listen and
be willing to listen when you have a business
Yeah. And being able to relate to things too. Like, cause sometimes if
you're in very different fields, you don't necessarily can
(09:16):
talk to each other about work as well. But if you're together
Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah. I have a couple of friends who, you
know, are husband and wife and they're both PTs and
it really works, you know, to your point, they compliment each
other. They, They're on the same page for most
(09:37):
things. So it's been, it's been really great. But
I think what's, what piece of advice would you have to, let's
say there are people listening right now who they're a husband and
wife. They want to start a business together. What piece of advice would
If you're going to start a business together, I would, I
would definitely map out first who's going
(09:59):
to be in charge of what. because
the friction comes when the other person
thinks that they're doing that thing that you think they're doing, right?
But if it's like, okay, well, I'm gonna be in charge of marketing, I'm gonna
be in charge of billing or whatever it is, right? The other person gives
their input for sure, but like, you're the decision
(10:21):
on that area. So I think that's the best advice I would give is like,
just try to be more planful with what areas
I think that's great advice and I've actually heard that
from a friend of mine who's a psychologist. She uses that when
she's working with couples just to break down like household tasks, right?
(10:42):
So like if you're in charge of taking out the trash, it
means like you're in charge of taking the trash out
of the trash can, going to every trash bin, taking it
out to wherever the garbage has to go, putting a new one in. Like
you have to make sure that what you're in charge of is everything and the other
person needs to like, you know, kind of stay,
(11:06):
Yeah. It's relationships. Right. And I think totally, obviously
it's a very different dynamic of a relationship, but you still need to
carry the same concept over with your employees or
people that your coworkers with, right. Because you got to, okay, this
is your role. These are the responsibilities you have. I think, uh,
good employers definitely, uh,
(11:30):
outline and are very good about reinforcing your
accountability, your responsibilities and let you go for it
and give you attaboys when you're really hitting
those responsibilities. So to some degrees, there's
some similarities there between how you would do that as a
(11:52):
Absolutely. I just had today a
bit of an in-service with a woman
who is part of
the HR team at Columbia University, University Medical
Center. And she was saying kind of
exactly that, like when you're talking with your employees, you
(12:13):
want to reinforce their job description. with
them. And you want to make sure that they know,
let's say it's a new hire, what are their responsibilities for 30 days,
60 days, 90 days and beyond. And you're looking at, to your
point, setting out those expectations, looking at what their
job description is and reinforcing that even
(12:35):
if it's a year from now from their hiring, keep reinforcing
that along with like the values and expectations of
your company. So Yeah. You're right on point. Right
Totally. Totally. Okay. So you sell your practice,
(12:55):
right? And you start practice promotions, which
is, like we said, a marketing agency. So let's get into marketing.
Specifically for healthcare practitioners, we're both physical therapists,
we can talk specifically about physical therapy. But
what are some things that physical therapy owners get
(13:16):
right and maybe get wrong when it
Yeah, I think we've got a very unique business. And
so we've got to leverage that in a unique way. If you think about the
experience of a patient when they come to us versus
going to, say, a physician's group, You know, it's a very different
(13:37):
experience. They're seeing us for a long time and
they get to know us. We get to know them. Uh, so one
thing that we usually have, if you're doing things
right from your service, your operations, how you're treating patients,
how you're taking care of them in the clinic is
you can develop incredible word of mouth. Uh,
(13:58):
so the, you know, the, the top clinics that I see have done very,
very well at how they run
their operations to create the best patient experience, to
develop that feeling of belonging to the
patient, right. Leveraging that in their marketing. Uh,
so that, that I would say is one of the critical things that. Clinics
(14:21):
who really get it right. Dive into that. And
I would say this if you're listening out there in any business, but especially
in kind of health care is being able to leverage
that relationship, leverage that story. And if you
think about all the people that come into our clinic, we
have incredible stories to tell, transformational stories.
(14:43):
And if you look at what's on TV, if you look at movies, it's
like that whole, everybody gravitates towards stories, right?
Hearing these like underdog stories and these transformational stories
and coming back from incredible, you know, disabilities. And
we have that every day in our clinics. It's amazing, right? But
(15:04):
where clinics may fall short is that they don't have mechanisms in
place to really capture those stories and
then promote them to the world. And that's what really
takes you to that next level is the better you
get at collecting those stories. That's going to be reviews, testimonials,
videos, you know, you name it. But we're really taking those
(15:26):
stories from within the clinic and being able to promote that
out, whether it's on social email websites, you
name it. And then as far as where I've seen clinics make
mistakes. I think the one biggest mistake that I see for, for
practices is that they don't leverage those relationships.
Well, they may have gotten amazing results for
(15:48):
the patient while they were in the clinic. And then the worst thing you can hear
is like, that's great. I'm so fantastic to hear that you're doing
much better, Mrs. Smith. I hope you never have to see you again.
Right? Worst thing you could possibly say, you know, I
want basically want to be that physical therapist for life. Right?
Right. And so we have to think of it that
(16:09):
way. And we have to build that lifetime value with
our patient. And how are we keeping communication with
them? How are we giving them useful tips and advice and keeping
in their mailbox and their email
inbox and on their social feeds and being that continued
expert? And they're like, oh yeah, I had a great experience there. And oh, you know what? My mom has
(16:31):
that problem. Maybe I should send her there. So that's what
we need to keep fostering. And so the clinics that, that make mistakes is
that you usually don't put much effort into that patient marketing
aspect. They go for the new patients all the time, but they don't pay attention to
Okay. So what, what can we do
to continue to foster those
(16:53):
relationships? without being
like, oh, I don't want to bother people too much. I don't want, do you know
what I mean? So there's like, you don't want to bombard people, but you
just want to be like a little, hey, how are you kind
Absolutely. That's such a common concern
(17:14):
that we're talking to our clients is that, oh, I don't want to bug them.
I'm like, how many emails do you think they get in their inbox in
a day? It's hundreds for a lot of people. How
many things do they see on their Facebook feed or
Instagram feed in a day? So you got
to realize that the average person is seeing about 3,000 marketing messages
(17:35):
a day. and you're not going to bug people. Now
you can bug people if you don't give them things of value and
you're constantly asking things from them. That's
annoying, right? But what can we do to provide value? And
the big thing there is we've got a lot of advice. We've got
a lot of knowledge that we can help people with. And
(17:56):
so, Hey, someone came to you for an ankle sprain. But
how many times have you been treating someone for an ankle sprain and
someone on the next, um, length is
having their neck worked on. Oh, I didn't know you guys treated next. Oh,
yeah. Next edX, you know, all kinds of stuff we help with. Yeah,
totally. So in our marketing, we need to
(18:16):
be giving tips and advice and, and
it can be on different body parts, right? For sure. Uh, and
nutrition and there's all kinds of things that we're doing today in our
clinics. Um, But that's the key thing is provide
value. And people want knowledge, tips, advice that they can share with
others or use for themselves. And that, if
(18:38):
you're producing that even a couple of times a week
And let's say you're a
practice owner, you're a solopreneur, you don't have a
big team, maybe it's just a couple of people. How
are we supposed to get all this done? Right. How
(19:00):
are we supposed to come up with marketing emails
once a week and treat our patients
and pay the bills and worry about finances and
keep your employees happy? It's a lot of work, right?
So how, how are we supposed to
(19:21):
come up with a marketing email, and
I don't want to say marketing, maybe a relationship email once a week, or
maybe it's once a month, or once every two weeks. What
Yeah, so I think it comes back to what
are your ambitions as a business owner?
If you're comfortable in a small business
(19:44):
and that's fine, whatever your goals are for that,
just know that you're going to obviously wear a lot of hats. If
you have ambitions to grow bigger and have a larger team,
maybe even have multiple locations, whatever may be there, The
way that I look at it is you have to promote bigger than you are.
(20:05):
So if you want to level up to that next level
of business where you might have multiple therapists
or you might have multiple people working for you. Uh, and
then that next level of business where you have maybe multiple locations
or multiple managers like you have to Look
at your plan of what that next level of marketing is
(20:28):
going to look like and what needs to get done At that level
and then do it. So if you're very small Yeah, you
have to You have to carve out a little bit of time, right?
It doesn't have to be a lot but just enough where I
think if you attack it like, hey, I'm going to spend
20 minutes here one day, 20 minutes another day, that's exhausting. You're
(20:50):
better off just carving out, you know, a couple hours a week, sit
down, plan out what you're going to work on for the month, and
then hammer out the, you know, the themes of, hey,
I've got these results or these reviews in for patients. I'm
going to do a theme around, you know, tips for back pain. I'm
going to use chat GPT, give you some ideas. That's
(21:12):
perfect. And then let me have it help me write a
few things out. I could get a couple of emails out this way.
I could redo that in a blog on my website. I
could do a couple of posts on social media about it. So it doesn't have
to be this huge daunting marketing extravaganza. You
(21:34):
Do you have any advice on, let's say you are
marketing, it's so-so, you're growing,
maybe not as fast as you want to, you're getting patients, maybe not as many as
you want to. Do you have any advice on how to do maybe a
marketing audit for your practice and what are things
to look at, metrics-wise, content, etc.?
(21:57):
Absolutely. Yeah. In fact, I wrote a book on it. It's called Market to Grow. And
in that book, I outlined some of the core areas that I've just researched
over the decades, working with thousands of practices. And
so some of the key areas here for new patients
is first looking at, okay, what
(22:19):
So it's important to develop physician relationships and network relationships.
That's a key, but sometimes it can be really hard to bust into those
Especially now that a lot of, um, large
hospital systems are referring to
within, right? It's much harder for,
(22:42):
not harder, but doctors are less likely to
refer outside of the system.
I saw a statistic the other day, I think it was about 74% of
physicians now work for either a
hospital system or a corporate group. So you've only
got 26% that are in private practice by themselves, which
(23:06):
10 years ago is probably like 40% worked for a hospital system.
huge shift in that area. So in
our world, in the PT and rehabilitation industry, it's
really about going direct to consumer now. And so one of
the key things you can do there is really, first off, look at how
your online discoverability is. How easy is it to
(23:28):
find you? And if we think about patient behavior, Over
65% of people are going to go to Dr. Google first to
research anything about getting help
before they ever make a phone call. So that's the number one place that
you really want to work to get found is on Google
(23:49):
first. And you will definitely want to work on how you rank
up in maps. You want to rank, Google Ads is
a very easy way to
get things started. It costs a little bit of money to advertise. It
doesn't have to be a lot, but it takes a little bit to get you there at the top. But
there's a lot of stuff that you can do yourself, especially in your
(24:13):
Super simple. There is first off, get pictures,
right? Great pictures of working with patients,
of course, with written permission, photo permission, things like that. But get
pictures of what it's like to be there and then
have that in your Google business profile. Of course, have all
your contact information in there. Question and answers. You
(24:35):
can put a lot of your own questions and answers in there. Common things that you would hear.
You can make it loaded too for keywords like physical therapy
or whatever your business is. You can connect your social
profiles in there. You can post in your Google business profile. So
it doesn't take a lot of tech savviness in there,
but you can put a little bit of effort in that and it can make a big difference in getting you found,
(24:57):
right? So your online discoverability is really key. And
then Google does look at your social profiles too
and how people interact with that. So you have to kind of
realize like where are people going to find me online? So am
I serving an older demographic? Well, maybe I want to pay
more attention to Facebook. I'm working with a middle-aged group
(25:19):
and maybe some younger demographics. I'm going to be in Instagram, right?
Or very young, I'm going to be in TikTok, you know, but most people
are going to be in Facebook because our bodies break down after middle
age, right? So Facebook and Instagram is
kind of where we're at. So again, posting things in there routinely doesn't
have to be crazy. Google's going to notice that
(25:40):
and start to show you more. So that really helps overall
with your online discoverability. And then one of the key investments in
your business is really your website. You have to think of your
website as your online storefront, right? So
if you're walking by a storefront and it doesn't look
that great, or it's kind of hard to get into, you're not
(26:01):
going to get people in the door, right? But if it looks amazing, it
piques people's interest and they make it very easy for people to come
in the door, you're going to get a lot more business in
the door. So that's what we call website conversions and it's
really looking at how many visitors you get to
how many people actually book an appointment or schedule an appointment with you. So
(26:22):
for example, most websites convert about 2% of
the people that come to them into actual scheduled appointments.
Now, if you were able to increase,
let's just say, for example, you get a thousand people visiting
your website a month, 2% gives you 20 new
(26:46):
So if I was able to improve how
people behaved on my website and I could see how they were behaving and I could
get them to pay more attention, stay around longer, read more of my stuff. I'm
much more likely to get them to take action. So just
a 2% increase in conversions doubles my
new patients from 20 to 40. And there's things
(27:09):
that like we do, for example, we have AI software
that helps our graphic designers mimic how people's eyes travel
around the screen. So you can design things and colors and all kinds
of stuff to make people's eyes track. And there's
also things called heat maps. So that actually tracks how people
scroll and click on your website. So then you can actually
(27:31):
say, hey, you know what, people are not really scrolling past this one section.
Maybe I need to redesign that a little bit. Get people to stay longer
on my website. So there's all things like things that you can do there.
Again, that's stuff that you can just have uh you know pay
someone to do kind of look at help you out with totally yeah but
it can make a big difference at the end of the day people coming in and then lastly we
(27:52):
talked about it already but that patient marketing component right
making sure that as you build a list of
people to your customers that you keep on
Right. Yeah. And I love, I'm so happy that
you brought up the website design because I don't
know about you, but I have seen some healthcare websites, some
(28:14):
PT websites that I go on. You don't even know
Like, like, you know, everything above the fold is like nonsense.
So like if you're on there and you don't have kind of who you
are, what you do in a way to connect, that's all above the fold. I
think you're I don't think that's good. I'm not experts in websites, but
(28:37):
And it comes back to, again, just that if you understand the
importance of that being how most people
will will find you and then
also decide to come to you. Then
you would put more effort and more investment into it. I think people
(29:00):
Because it should be a whole vibe. Right?
Like it should be your vibe. Like it's, you
know, the, the way things, like you said, the way things are laid out, the
colors, the copy, everything. I think it
And one mistake I see, again, this comes back to just, I think,
understanding how important it really is, but the clinics that
(29:23):
put the effort into getting good professional
photography at the beginning and put that within their website, they
do amazing with their results. But the clinics that just
don't have any of that and they just have to have stock images up there,
Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. It and, you
(29:45):
know, investing in a photo shoot now is not as expensive as
it used to be. Remember that like 10, 15 years
ago, you'd be paying like three thousand plus dollars for a
Yeah. So different times where you are, but right, right, right. Three
to 500 bucks, I think is realistic. Yeah, I'd say, you know, at least once
a year, have a professional photographer come through, get
(30:08):
some fresh headshots, get lots of images of you
treating patients and yeah, age them in a way that makes it
look comfortable and soothing. Don't be like cranking on someone's leg. That's
(30:31):
Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's like the, the
food commercials, right? It's never real food. It's like, you know,
the, the cream is glue and right. Right. Right. Cheese
Exactly. Like at least make it seem like people are somewhat happy
to be there. You know, it doesn't, you don't have to be like high-fiving
(30:56):
at least, you know, make it look like and realistic
So it's like if you're showing a back treatment, like you don't want to
just have like, you know, two little fingers on there and like smiling to
the camera, like that's not quite what we do, you know?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you want to Again,
this is all part of like that planning with the pictures and the photography is
(31:20):
looking at, okay, well, who am I serving? And what type
of pictures would I have? So, you know, if you're going to have a pelvic health
program, well, it's got to be very soothing, look like
private, you know, right, intimate there. So
it's, you know, it's, it's not going to be shocking to someone. But
if it's a sports performance, well, that's going to be a very different type
(31:40):
of photography, right? Yeah, action, act and cutting edge and feel,
you know, kind of an animation kind of feel to it. You got
to know who you're marketing, what kind of pictures, what kind of feel you're going to
Right. As with all marketing, know who your ideal
customer is. If you don't, it will
(32:01):
Yeah. All right. So as we start to kind of wrap things up
here, what haven't we covered that
you are like, the listeners really need to
know this. This is super important when it comes to promoting
Yeah, absolutely. I would say the one thing I have a
(32:22):
lot of conversations with people on and changing their mindset is
really when it comes to metrics and
your budget. So I see people time
and time again make the mistake of not investing enough
in their marketing and they wonder why they struggle. And
you have to realize your marketing is the throttle to your engine, your
(32:46):
practice engine, your business engine. And so it's
what brings people in, right? It's what brings people into your business.
So you have to have enough in place, enough energy
to be driving those people in. So as far as metrics, you
wanna be looking at your customer acquisition costs, that's primary. So
that for physical therapy practice, for example, you wanna
(33:07):
get that below a hundred. You know, if you get that down to like $50 to
get someone in, that's fantastic. And that's basically just all your marketing expenses.
Even if you have a marketing director, you lump their salary in there and
divide that by the number of new patients or new people, new customers that
you get. you know, in a month, and that gives you your,
your customer acquisition costs. And then you want to look at your customer lifetime value
(33:29):
is okay. So if I, for physical
therapy, you have someone come in, say 10 or 12 visits, let's
say an average case might be like $1,000 for their
care. So it's your job to make sure they come for their visits to get fully better
and then you want to market enough
to them. How can you get them to send another person for
(33:53):
referral and how can you get them back for care when they need you?
And that can increase your customer lifetime value of
that patient to say two, three, four, $5,000. Right. Others.
So that's another key metric to be looking at is your customer lifetime value
with it. And then lastly, it's your budget. And so
Small Business Association really does
(34:16):
research across all types of industries, and it can vary between
like 5% to 15%. It
really depends on where you are, where your business is. And if you want big growth,
you're going to have to put more percentage of what you make in
revenue towards your monthly budget. But
(34:36):
Yeah, and that's actually pretty common
among physical, when you talk to physical therapy owners, even in,
oh, what's that? It'll come to me, it'll come to me later. It's
a big sort of, I think
comes out twice a year and it's an analysis
(35:03):
Maybe. Yeah. Maybe that's it. Yeah. Where they break down
like how much, like what those percentages are. And it is shockingly
low. It is like, I was going to, I was going to say, isn't it like
Yeah, so if you're spending like 2% now
and you have, okay, I wanna double my business in a year. Well, you can't
(35:25):
keep spending 2% and expect to double your business, right? You
gotta allocate some more funds towards advertising, marketing, whatever you
need to get to that goal that you wanna have. So that's
one of the key things is when you're looking at your planning, am I spending enough
here? What is my customer acquisition cost? What is my customer lifetime
value? If you understand those metrics, you're half
(35:47):
Yeah, no, that's great. This is great advice for
people because most business owners, we really like our numbers and
we like our spreadsheets and we like to know what
things cost and how that then can hopefully increase
And that's what all of this is meant to do. So this is
(36:08):
great. So marketing expense, customer lifetime value budget.
Those are three big line items that we really want to have a
Perfect. Okay. So what are the
big takeaways here that you want people, and it
(36:29):
can be a 30,000 foot view, or it can be as,
as targeted as you want, but what are the takeaways that you
Yeah, I want, I would really like them to Make
sure that they're spending enough time to plan in your business because
it's so easy to get bogged down in the day to day. Totally. The
(36:52):
first thing you have to do is carve out time. So even if
it's a couple of hours, carve out time and look
at where you are with your current marketing, where you want to go, plan something out.
Look at your customers, right? So am
I doing enough marketing to my present and
past customers? That's a big area to focus on right there.
(37:14):
How's my online discoverability look? Let me just go explore on
Google and check some things out. How do I look to a prospective customer out
there? How does my website look and feel if I put myself in
the mindset of a customer? You know, that can make a big difference. And
then am I taking enough of the stories from
within my business and telling those in my marketing, because
(37:36):
that will really transform your marketing. And of course, measuring
Right. I think that's great. A great way to almost
end the podcast. But before we go, where can
people find you if they have questions,
comments, they want to learn more about practice promotions, where
(37:58):
Absolutely. Yeah. Practicepromotions.net. We have tons of free
advice, blogs, downloads, you name it. You can even get our book
there or you can get our book on markettogrow.net. That's like the
numeral number two. So markettogrow.net. You
Yeah. And for all of you listening, if you go to the show notes in
(38:20):
this episode on whatever platform you're listening to right
now, just scroll down. We'll have links to the website. We'll
have links to get your free market to grow book,
which is very generous. And we'll have links to all
of the social media for Neil and for practice promotions.
And one click will take you right there. So last question.
(38:43):
Uh, given where you are now in your life and career, what advice would
you give to your 20 year old self? I would assume
You really should have kept the accent, but anyway, what other advice would
Well, yes, yeah, I totally understand that. I
(39:04):
would give myself some advice in that, if
I'm learning things not to take
so long with it, try to learn and
execute and implement quicker. That would be my big
advice there, because it's very easy to learn things and then it takes forever to
get something executed or implemented, but if you just go for it, You
(39:28):
I think that's great advice. Uh, so Neil, thank you
so much for coming on the podcast today. I really appreciate your
And everyone else out there listening. Thank you so
much for tuning in. Have a great couple of days and stay healthy,
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.