Action Words Sell Physiotherapy & Physical Therapy

We are all selling something. It may be our clinical skills, our course, our products, our theory or our profession.

Yet, selling comes hard to physiotherapists and physical therapists. A combination of science, altruism and professionalism seems to create a reluctance to utilise standard selling strategies.

As an example, physiotherapists and physical therapists tend to restrict their communications to information only with the hope that the intrinsic truth of the message will be recognized and acted upon by the reader. And in a very crowded and competitive marketplace where ‘sexy’ sells, the truth is far less attractive.

One very simple and highly effective selling strategy that could be easily used by physiotherapists and physical therapists is to include a call-to-action - an explicit instruction to the audience designed to prompt an immediate response. Usually relying upon active verbs, common examples are phrases like “call now”, “find out more” or “make an appointment”. The call-to-action text is often located in a coloured box with a hyperlink to a page that provides the means of following through on the action.

A call-to-action is surprisingly powerful. It moves the recipient from being a passive receiver of information that is usually forgotten, to a person who takes action now.

Every call-to-action needs to quickly answer two important questions: What do you want them to do and why should they do it? The introductory information identifies the problem and the solution is achieved by following the call-to-action.

The dynamism of the call-to-action verbs can also be used for brand or campaign slogans to create ‘action slogans’. Two strong examples from our profession come from the United States of America - the very home of marketing and selling.

The American Physical Therapy Association has recently adopted #ChoosePT to promote physical therapy as an alternative to the escalating and catastrophic use of opioid medications in their country. The hashtag phrase is used at the end of information about physical therapy in tweets, posts, images, posters, etc. #ChoosePT provides a clear instruction to readers.

Similarly, the #GetPT1st campaign of Sean Hagey and his team, has struck a chord with many in the profession because of the even more powerful direction to act. Sean’s action slogan says, “Get physical therapy. Not anything else. And get it now.”

The short, simple and succinct messages of #ChoosePT and #GetPT1st are compelling. Three words action slogans are renowned for resonating with audiences, consider 'Just Do It', 'Lest We Forget', 'Make America Great' and 'Stop the Boats' to name just a few.

But what next for the reader after reading the slogan? Both #ChoosePT and #GetPT1st lack a next step. The reader cannot simply walk out the door to attend a physical therapist. They will need to find a way to get more information and following hashtags will likely only provide greater breadth of information rather than depth on the topic.

In both cases the action slogans have been registered as domain names for websites: www.ChoosePT.com and ww.GetPT1st.com. And within these websites more information resides that author wants you to read, including the desired action of how to locate a physical therapist near you. Unfortunately this means a two-step process for the interested person. First a search engine, and then provided the results are appropriate, clicking on the website link. Already people are losing interest.

To reduce the process to a single step the new .physio domain extension offers a huge advantage. The URL of where to go for more information is built into the action slogan, for example in the above cases, choose.physio and get.physio.

A simple click of the URL reduces the work of the reader and avoids the risk of search engine misdirection.

Recognising the strength of controlling the next action of the consumer, marketers are moving to more specific URLs. In the 2017 Superbowl advertisement tally the number of hashtag appearances continued their three year decline 30% whilst the use of URLs jumped to 39% (ref).

With the addition of over a thousand new domain extensions, this intuitive form of branded navigation will soon become commonplace in strategic marketing. Already there are examples of action slogan URL's, like design.google, call.skype, go.java, visit.london, follow.aco, apply.latrobe, study.monash and play.afl.

With the profession's own domain extension .physio there exists a great opportunity to register action slogan domain names like finda.physio, go.physio, study.physio, seek.physio, discover.physio, move.with.physio, consult.physio, better.physio and so on.

To register your action word slogan as a URL go to www.dot.physio.