Want to learn how to succeed in marketing for activity-based therapy centers? Check out our list of 10 expert tips in this blog post!

With the increasing number of spinal cord injury (SCI) cases in the country, more and more affected individuals continue to look for promising ways to regain mobility. As someone running an activity-based therapy center, you’d want to be in front of this audience. This way, you can impart them with your knowledge and possibly become part of their journey towards slowly reclaiming their strength and renewing their hope for recovery.

To do this, you’ll need to keep abreast of the techniques used in marketing for activity-based therapy centers. Join us in our discussion below to learn the critical elements needed to create a good marketing campaign for an activity-based therapy center.

1. Position your brand as a source of hope and healing

Branding is one the most crucial steps in marketing any business. It sets you apart from other clinics in the area and ensures that you communicate the right message to the right people. It also allows you to leave an impact on your patients. 

When you’re working on your branding, here are some things you should remember:

• Find out how current clients perceive you
• Know where your brand stands
• Determine if your current brand positioning can set you up for success
• Make sure that your brand is credible and reliable
• Spread your message of hope through your branding 

2. Get to know your competition and identify opportunities

Running a thorough competitor and market analysis is crucial in sustaining your clinic’s growth and progress. It provides you with a bird’s eye view of everything you need to work on.  It can help you figure out things such as:

• How you should reach out to patients 
• How to make meaningful connections 
• The strengths and weaknesses of your main competitors
• Possible opportunities you can use to advance your lead
• How a potential client would respond to your offers

3. Offer value to potential clients in need of help

There’s no better way of making a lasting mark on your client’s life than providing them incredible value even before they decide to join a program. It shows your genuine concern for their well-being and their recovery. 

People who have spinal cord injuries tend to experience a roller coaster of emotions. Reaching out to them and offering them heartfelt concern and great value can make a huge difference. You can do this by providing free resources on activity-based rehabilitation, hosting online events that tackle SCI, or going the extra mile every time a patient reaches out for help.

Instead of just seeing your clinic as another place where they can get help, it becomes their source of hope and motivation. Giving more than what your patients asked for can make a lot of difference in your marketing approach. 

4. Create a website that has everything a client might need

Building a website is one of the leading ways in marketing for activity-based therapy centers. It allows you to create an extension of your business online, an important step nowadays if you want to expand your reach outside of your local area. 

You can think of a website as a sales, marketing, lead generation, and customer support tool combined into one. If you have one that’s professionally built, you can use it for various purposes that can help you grow your online presence and increase web visits into scheduled appointments.

If you don’t have a website yet, you’re missing out on many opportunities, such as: 

• Having an organized platform where you can engage with the community you built
• Creating a unified space for content that can spread awareness about SCI’s and other neurological conditions and how activity-based rehabilitation can help
• Answering your client’s queries outside your clinic hours with FAQs page or automated chatbots on your site
• Providing information on your services that could affect a client’s decision in joining your program

5. Work on your website SEO

Work doesn’t stop after you successfully launch a website for your activity-based therapy center. You’ll need to put more effort into driving traffic into your pages. Otherwise, only a handful of people would know about your newly published site.

To start building traction, you’ll need to implement various search engine optimization tactics. By doing so, you can increase your chances of getting found online when a patient searches for information about activity-based therapy.

Here are some fundamental SEO tactics that you’ll need to implement:

• Target the right search keywords – Knowing the key terms used by SCI patients when looking for information about rehabilitation options allows you to explore the topics you’ll need to discuss on your website. It also comes helpful in:
• • • Understanding your patient’s intent 
    • Knowing their specific stage in the Client’s Journey
    • Pinpointing other services that you should offer
    • Creating a content map for your main pages and blog posts

• Build webpages for the most important keywords – Using the results from your keyword research, you can start creating pages optimized for your top keywords. You can also create pages based on the content map you create.

• Make sure that your website gets indexed for search – If your web pages aren’t indexed, you won’t appear on the search results pages. 

• Address technical issues that could affect your site’s performance – This could include page load speed, coding issues, image size problems, server speed delays, and mobile-responsiveness.

• Establish credibility by getting backlinks – Backlinks serve as your trust and credibility rating. The more authoritative sites link to your content, the more credible your website appears to search engines. 

6. Tap into social media and be where your patients are

Millions of patients and their loved ones are on social media. Some of them join groups geared towards finding relief from their condition. They actively join discussions, seek help and engage in various content related to health and spinal injury care. If your activity-based therapy center isn’t on social media yet, it’s high time for you to set up your channels. 

You can start with the most commonly used platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Learn about the pros and cons of using each social media platform. You can maximize their potential for bringing in new patients to your clinic by following these essential tips:

• Stick to a consistent posting schedule 
• Update your pages regularly
• Jazz up your SMM game by offering content that your clients love
• Keep your content fun, informational, and interesting
• Provide updated details, especially on your business NAP (name, address, and phone number)

7. Establish a good relationship with email marketing

Think your email letters will only end up in the spam folder? While one may quickly assume that email marketing is a complete waste of time, in truth, it can deliver substantial results for a business, most especially in the healthcare niche. 

The reason why it’s so effective in bringing in new clients is its very personal approach when engaging with the audience. It also enables you to deliver tailored messages to your clients or other people included in your email list.

When planning your email marketing campaign, you should take note of the following practices:

• Clean up your email listing regularly
• Create effective subject lines that can increase your open rate
• Plan your email content and take into consideration your clients buyer journey
• Pay attention to what the reports say about email open rates and click rates and make necessary changes to your approach

8. Reach more with paid advertisements

Paid advertisements through Google Ads or Facebook Ads come in quite handy in expanding your reach. It helps you get more eyeballs on critical content like a service promotion, a special event, or a new rehabilitation program. You can also use paid ads to drive traffic to selected pages on your site. 

When planning your paid ads strategy, note the tips below so you can take advantage of your ad spending:

• Think of your objectives when boosting a post or running a Google Ad campaign
• Organize your target keywords for the ads (Google Ads)
• Don’t forget to include negative keywords (Google Ads)
• Pick the most suitable content when using FB or IG boosts
• Check the quality of your landing pages
• Set your audience correctly to get the most out of your ads

9. Retarget old website visitors

Besides driving new visitors to your landing page or website, you can also use ads for retargeting old site visitors. This will help you remind previous web visitors to return to the pages they checked out.

Statistics report that 3 out of 4 people notices a retargeting ad, and remarketing ads on Facebook tend to have a 76 percent clickthrough rate. 

Keep in mind the best practices when retargeting old site visitors when creating your strategy:

• Show the ads to the right people by understanding where they are in the buyer’s cycle.
• Create copy that converts by discussing a specific feature of your services/rehab program.
• Streamline your audience targeting tactic and choose those most relevant to the ads you will publish.
• Offer exclusive promos or freebies that match their needs.
• Avoid showing a remarketing ad more than three times.
• Regularly take note of what works and what doesn’t and make necessary adjustments. 
• Tap into other forms of content like videos that can pique the interest of your audience.

10. Make sure you have a consistent NAP

Increasing clinic visits is no doubt one of the most important goals when marketing for activity-based therapy centers. It’s a great measure of your marketing strategies' effectiveness. Besides implementing the tips we’ve enumerated above, it will also help you significantly to ensure that your business listings that contain your Name, Address, and Phone number remain consistent anywhere on the web. 

Double-check on your Google My Business listing or other directory listings. You want to ensure that your patients have no trouble locating your clinic, regardless of the online directory they use. 

Marketing for Activity-based Therapy Centers – Leave it to Professionals

Launching a marketing campaign requires a lot of work. It can take up a lot of your time and require extra human resources. For the inexperienced, it may also appear daunting as you need to look at several factors such as your competition, target market, branding and many more.

Fortunately, you can leave all the planning and execution process with a specialized digital marketing team like Hope and Healing Solutions. Marketing for activity-based therapy centers has been one of our specialties as a company.

In fact, we currently work with I Am Able, an activity-based therapy center in Florida. With our marketing team's assistance, our client has touched the lives of many struggling patients who have had a spinal cord injury.

You can also become successful in amplifying your reach and helping more people with SCI. Guided by the latest marketing trends, our vast experience in the industry, and access to research and analysis tools, we can launch a marketing campaign that delivers results.

Get in touch with us today to discover our approach to marketing for activity-based therapy centers. We look forward to partnering with you in helping more patients in need!