Offline Marketing: How To Make A Huge Impact On A Budget | Tips For PT Clinic Owners

Let’s go back “offline” and talk about sending direct mail or postcards to your perfect patient. I have had great success with direct mail campaigns; I like them because they are quick and easy to get started, and in most instances they can be very cost effective. 

We’ll start with postcard marketing. The first thing to remember is that we don’t want to be mailing anyone and everyone in your town. You only want to be mailing your perfect patient. You will be more successful by mailing 100 of your perfect patients than 1,000 people at random. Go deep, not wide. This requires you to have a list of people who represent your ideal patient: there are many services that allow you to go online and search for your perfect patient by their demographic and geographic location. 

For example, I could talk to a “list broker” and rent or buy a list of 500 people living within five miles of my clinic. I could get even more specific by ensuring that the list of names and addresses I got within that five mile radius only contained females in their 50’s, and, that each household has more than four people in the house. That would suggest that the lady has two children and that she is family orientated. That is the person who I know is likely to spend more money with me. I could get even more specific and ensure that the person had an average household income of $100,000 or more. I could even rent or buy a list of people who fit all of those criteria and additionally, have recently bought some kind of health product in the past 12 months. 

Again, as you are reading this you are seeing that the success of any direct marketing lies in knowing “who” your perfect patient is. Even with postcards and direct mail, you must know who that person is, if you don’t, marketing to them is not going to work. 

How to Make Postcard Marketing Work

So, to make this work I must first get a list which contains all of the names and addresses of the people I want to target. Start with no more than 300-500 names. I once heard a story of a physical therapist sending 12,000 pieces out – the campaign failed spectacularly. That is like burning $12,000 right in front of your eyes. 

That’s not fun. It would have been obvious after mailing 500 that the campaign wasn’t going to work and he could have altered the message before the next 500 went out. The smart way to do it is to start with an initial 300-500 names. Mail these people a postcard that talks to them about their problems and how you are familiar with them. Then, “offer” them something that they can get from you in the way of starting to solve that problem. What might that “offer” be? Of course, it is going to be your lead magnet.

If you are targeting people with back pain and you have a list of 500 people aged 50 and above, then there is a very good chance that 50 or so will currently have back pain or suffer from it regularly. And in the same way as newspapers work, the person who you send the postcard to will most likely know someone else who suffers from low back pain she will kindly show or give the postcard to them. 

Direct Mail – Just As Effective

Really, the only difference between postcards and direct mail is the format. The content hardly changes. Sure, there might be slightly fewer words on a postcard, but what you are saying and offering is not all that different. Fewer words, but the same message. 

My secret is to always start a marketing campaign using the longest piece I need to write. I take out the main points off the letter and copy it across to create a postcard. And if you want to know how I get the content for my letter, it comes from the newspaper ad content that I write. I am not re-inventing the wheel here. I am not writing for the sake of writing. I am just taking what I know works best and putting the same message onto a different marketing media. If people respond to the newspaper ad, it tells me that the message works: all I have to do now is roll it out across the different media. 

The point is that people respond differently to different marketing media. Someone might like to read it in a long-form letter. The person next door might not have the time to read that length, and instead prefers to read it in a shorter form like a postcard. This is vital for you to understand because really, all you have to do is commit to getting one of these media right. Once you know the person, you’ve got the message in the ad right, and the offer is pulling in phone calls, you can very easily move it to another platform. It is called the “Wheel of Engagement”, whereby you take the same piece of engaging content and get it seen everywhere your perfect patient is looking. 

To sum it up, the most important thing to get right when it comes to making postcard and direct mail work is the “list” you will buy or rent, and use. If you do not have the right people on that list, those who resonate with your headline, or your marketing message is weak and the offer of the free report is not able to solve their problem, then they will not respond. Postcard marketing and direct mail can also be used to market to your past patients. As a general rule, I make a point of marketing to my past patients by mail at least once per month. Never let anyone tell you that the old school stuff is dead – I assure you I would not be spending my money on it if it didn’t work.  

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PAUL GOUGH is a multi-time No.1 bestselling author of The New Patient Accelerator Method, The Physical Therapy Hiring Solution, To Sell is Healthy, and The Healthy Habit. He is also a former professional soccer physical therapist turned successful clinic owner from the UK (a country where healthcare is free). He is the founder of the Paul Gough Physio Rooms – a successful cash pay clinic he started from a spare room in his home with no money down and with no business or marketing skills. He has since scaled his clinic from one to four locations, and zero to $1m in cash pay revenue and he now helps clinic owners all across America and around the world to get more cash pay patients using his proven systems.