Everything is changing.

Remember when an advertisement in the phone book was enough to market your clinic? Sure, Yellow Pages had a monopoly and could charge what they wanted, but it was all you needed to rest easy that your clinic could be found and easily contacted. There also wasn’t a great deal of difference between clinics who paid extra and those who didn't. Some clinics could afford an advertisement that was a little larger and more impressive, but it was usually just a matter of a few inches of space.

Those days are over and things are very different now with both good and bad consequences. How this affects your clinic really depends on how you view this change and where your clinic is located. If you're the only clinic in town then it's probably not going to worry you much, however for those in cities the story is considerably different. In this blog we’ll discuss a few of the implications of the digital revolution, how the industry might change and what you can do to make the most of this new landscape.

1. Reviews really matter.

As our lives shift online, reviews matter more than ever. Poor service has always resulted in angry customers venting in a very public way, however now they have a much larger platform and can easily affect the decision of people they have never met. If you are a shoddy practitioner who rushes people through in short, ineffective treatment sessions then prospective customers can find out about it with a quick search. These reviews are often posted on sites such as yelp and completely out of your control. You might not be on the internet yet but your patients are and they can let other people know either how great you are, or how bad you are. A small disclaimer here; While most of the time good treatment and patient satisfaction go together, occasionally your patients may be dissatisfied despite your best efforts. Chasing reviews is dangerous territory and by no means do we suggest to do that.

Furthermore, many registration bodies don’t allow physiotherapists to have testimonials on their website however many accept that physiotherapists have no responsibility towards reviews that are left on other sites such as google plus, Facebook or yelp. Check with your local registration body to see what your obligations are.

2. Patients find you online, usually using a smart phone.

Think like a patient. You’re looking for a new hairdresser, so the first think you do is a google search. A few come up on the first page. You don’t go to the second page unless no results come up, but even in that case you usually just change the search terms.

Then you click the first link, have a look at their website. How does it look? Does it look professional, like a nice place to go? If you care a lot about quality this is going to be quite important to you. Then to find out what other people have said about the place you might search for reviews and if there are a few bad reviews you probably wont go there. So then you go to the second listing and repeat the procedure.

The implications here is that if you don’t rank on a google

search, potential patients won’t find you at all!! Google rankings and the way they work is not only completely different to the egalitarian methods of your old phone book ads but the way they produce rankings is constantly changing.

Here are a few facts you might not be aware of; google (yahoo or bing) are in competition with each other to provide the most relevant search results to their users. This means that they are constantly trying to make sure that search terms return the most useful results.

Part of the reason why most of us use google instead of these other search engines is that their algorithms have been more successful in predicting which site we are looking for based on our search terms. This is actually a hugely complex process, despite how simple it seems.

Search engines do this by ranking your sites against other sites with similar keywords for example “physiotherapy” “Sydney” “back pain” . They then compare the amount of traffic to that page, they also reward sites that have more social media interaction. If so far you haven’t seen the point to getting on social media, this is quite a big motivation. It might not bring new customers in directly, however it can help with your search engine rankings for your website. In a recent update, google has also begun to penalise websites that are not mobile friendly.

What if you don’t have a website?

You can still be found through sites such as Yelp and Yellow pages who can list you and still come up quite high on google rankings which is great news for the IT illiterate, however if there are larger clinics in the area with a better online presence they are going to beat you every time.

The other issue that arises If you’re not utilising social media/websites is that any clinic who does master the art of online media will get ALL the available exposure. Make no mistake, this is a new phenomenon and may start to impact established clinics negatively in the next few years if not already.

Without trying to scare anyone, if you’re one of those amazing physiotherapists who has run a successful business for twenty years, has amazing knowledge and clinical skills but are reluctant to get online, unfortunately your customer base could be quickly overturned by a clinic run by new grads with a little bit of online savvy let alone a chain of clinics with a designated social media. The good news is that there are plenty of people who can offer you paid help. There are some great companies springing up that offer really affordable options to clinics regarding website design, social media management and marketing tips/design.

You might even find that with a little effort and perseverance you actually like being on social media :)

All that negativity aside, here are some of the really positive aspects to the transition of our lives online.

• You have direct access to your patients and their friends and can create a community between them and your clinic, easily keeping them up to date with the happenings in your clinic. Social media can be really fun and give you a chance to really influence the lives of your patients for the better.

• You can use social media to educate the public sharing interesting articles. The university of Google has made everyone an expert, but also much more interested in their own health. Physiotherapists can use this their advantage by now having a platform to educate their social media family in a more complex and interesting way. You have a lot of knowledge and this gives you an great opportunity to share it.

• With a little education and effort you can grow your clinic’s presence and market directly without spending too much money. Facebook allows you to spend as little as $2 to boost your posts to people of your own choosing, including people of a certain location. Provided you can choose interesting content this type of advertising is allowing small business to compete with bigger companies for the attention of people who matter.

Physionews is dedicated to help clinics, particularly small ones keep up with the changes that come with the digital revolution. Like our page to keep up with upcoming blogs on marketing and managing social media.