How To Choose & Create Your Best Marketing Strategy?
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[00:00:00] Hey there. Welcome to the O. T. Business corner of hand therapy secrets. My name is Hoang. I'm an occupational therapist and certified hand therapist. And 10 years ago, I went out on my own and created my own therapy clinic. And then about five years ago, four or five years ago, I created Hand Therapy Secrets
[00:00:25] so here I'm going to share with you some of the things I've done some great successes, some mistakes. And I'm going to answer a lot of your questions based around business. So I got this question in from Tom and he actually asked me a few questions, but I'm going to consolidate it for you. So he asked me my experience with working with workshops and digital marketing.
[00:00:50] For workshops, what I think about marketing to doctors and then how I brought awareness to my community. So [00:01:00] basically, all of those questions really come down to how do you pick and create your marketing strategy? How do you pick and create your marketing strategy? So without the right eyeballs on your business, you're not going to bring in the people who then you will talk to and see if they're the right fit and invite them in and be your patient, right?
[00:01:27] So there's a marketing aspect, there's a selling aspects, and then the operations is you're actually providing the therapy that you're really good at doing, but no one's going to know, no one's going to know that you're so great if you don't market it a certain way, and then you don't sell it a certain way for them to actually come in and utilize your services.
[00:01:50] So companies that do like a lot of word of mouth. Do a lot of word of mouth over a long period of time and [00:02:00] they have proven their track record and people speak well of them because they did such great things. When you're getting started, you're like, Oh, what do I need to do? And that you're like, what do I need to do to get more eyeballs on my business and on me and what I do and what I'm really good at.
[00:02:16] And that really comes to picking and creating your marketing strategy. Now there's more to it, but I have really honed it in into three things. What type of clinic you want, what you're willing to do, and trial and error. So let's dive into what's my experience. So the type of clinic that I want it, and you have to decide this for yourself.
[00:02:44] The type of clinic that I wanted at the time that I had started it over like 10 years ago was I was doing a lot of workers comp. In my prior jobs and then in the job before that was doing a lot of insurance. [00:03:00] And so that was all I knew. All I knew is workers comp and like private insurance, Medicare, and that kind of stuff.
[00:03:06] And so when I started my business, I wanted a clinic that was, I was treating hand injuries. Like I was so used to doctors sending me. post op dressing post surgical cases. And I've treated the whole arm. So when I started workshops were the furthest things from my mind. I didn't even know that they existed.
[00:03:35] And I remember starting out and then After about a year or so, I started to see certain business coaches talking about like how physical therapists can do workshops and bring tons of people into their, to their clinic and community and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I didn't really jump on that effort.
[00:03:57] first, I was just like, let me see if [00:04:00] that's something that I really want to do. And it took me a few years. And then I tried it out, but you have to decide what type of clinic you want to run. And I didn't get the bulk majority of my patients through workshops because I was treating a lot of post surgical cases.
[00:04:21] All I knew where you fell, you broke your wrist, you broke your arm, you had tendon lacerations, you had shoulder surgery. I was doing a ton of post surgical cases that made the bulk of my caseload and there were no workshops for that. Once I started going and doing more Oh, I can actually treat people who just have chronic issues.
[00:04:47] They have chronic shoulder inflammation and impingement syndrome. We have tons of people who have elbow tendonitis and elbow pain, right? Tennis elbow, ladder, Citis and things like that.[00:05:00] That was when I started to dive into a little bit of workshops. Just like anything else, if you want people to come, you have to get tons and tons of eyeballs on it and then draw them into come and there's a whole strategy.
[00:05:16] Just on filling up your workshops. I know that in talking with people who've done workshops and do a lot of marketing for them like lower back and hip problems or knee problems tend to fill up more in volume than like hand problems and shoulder problems. It doesn't matter why.
[00:05:41] Majority of the time it's, it comes down to what people perceive as their independence, right? So if you hurt your back and you can't walk or your knee hurts and you can't walk, people feel a sense of loss of independence from mobility. Whereas like when you can't use [00:06:00] your arms, you can still walk and you can still Function, though, be it very, frustrating and limiting, you can compensate with your other arm.
[00:06:14] So people tend to wait longer with hand and arm problems. And then workshops, I didn't even. Going to workshops for post surgical cases because there's a certain sense of urgency when it comes to post surgical cases and people aren't waiting You know oh my workshop's in three weeks. You're not telling your post op patient to wait three weeks.
[00:06:39] You're like Dude, you need to come in today Like it's already been three weeks. You don't gotta flex for 10 in a week three weeks late so it didn't work For me, but you have to decide what type of clinic do you want? And then you build your strategy based [00:07:00] on will workshops work for you?
[00:07:02] How do you know, are you willing to do it? Are you willing to do it? Because you have to think about workshops as like, when do you, when are people going to come to your workshop? Your age range makes a difference. If you're talking to thirties, forties, fifties, even sixties. They're working. So you do your workshops late.
[00:07:21] Maybe you might do your workshops on a weekend, on a Saturday. If you're talking to an older patient population that are all retired, maybe you can do a 12 o'clock workshop. Because maybe they're all retired and they have free time at 12 and you could feed them a little lunch and it brings people in, right?
[00:07:43] So in like workshops and things like that, you really fundamentally have to think about what kind of clinic do you want to have? What are you willing to do? And then be able to be willing to trial and error them, right? I trial [00:08:00] and error workshops and Where I live, where my clinic is, people already complain about the amount of traffic, right?
[00:08:14] So the idea of coming in at 5 30 or six o'clock during Busy hour during traffic. I mean nobody wanted to come right? Nobody wants to come They don't want to sit in that traffic They think about how hard it is to leave and the type of clinic that I have I am one Location so people actually are willing to drive in to see me from all over So I don't know if you're familiar with Miami, but Miami is huge Right.
[00:08:49] And within the whole compass of Miami, you have suburbs, you have small districts. I am in a very particular location called Drow. So I'm very [00:09:00] close to the airport, right off the highway. But, people have come as far as the Keys. So Key Largo they have driven up, people have come from homestead, which is 30 minutes North of Key West.
[00:09:14] I have had people come from Miami beach and people who are on the islands, never want to leave the island to come into the mainland, but people were willing to drive. from Sunny Isles, which is north along the beach as well. So they're coming down to see me. I've had people from Fort Lauderdale come to see me.
[00:09:34] I currently have Oh my God, I have two patients right now that I know of their location that they're coming down right now. Cause one of them wants to come very specifically at 12, 11, 12. So he misses the traffic and he doesn't have to get up too early. So he, I think he comes from like plantation.
[00:09:53] Another one comes, I believe from Coral Springs and he wants to 7am because he's I want to get down there. I'm going to [00:10:00] do my therapy and I'll leave. I'll go against traffic to go to work. To a certain extent, people are, are willing to drive in from various locations to, to, see me and my team to get the help that they need.
[00:10:15] But that is a type of clinic I have built, right? That is what I'm willing to do. My hours are a certain way. But I don't know if I want to do workshops like at night, right at night. I don't, my pa my potential people didn't want to come in at night to do it. But I knew that, I know that because I trialed and error it.
[00:10:42] I did a few. Now, I don't think I did it very well because very few people came, but it takes a little while to get it going. So if you decide that's part of your marketing strategy, then you've got to put 100 percent in it. You've got to be like, I got to market [00:11:00] this thing. This is my marketing plan.
[00:11:03] And it goes a lot more into it, but then that's the thing that you're going to do, right? I didn't think for me workshops based on the type of clinic that I was creating really worked for me. But I wanted community awareness. I wanted people to know who I am. My name is Huang Tran. The clinic that I run is called Hands On Therapy Services in Doral.
[00:11:28] I help people with hand and arm injuries. Like I help people in their forties, fifties and sixties. I help people 40 plus be more active, live pain free and avoid things like taking pills, getting injections and having surgery, right? So if they are living with this chronic pain and they can't figure out.
[00:11:52] They've gone to Kairos, they've gone to physical therapy, they've gone to your run of the mill, types of [00:12:00] locations and they still have pain and now their doctor keeps telling them you should have surgery and they're like, I don't want surgery. I feel in my gut something's gotta get this is not the only answer.
[00:12:13] And so they'll come to us and they'll ask us questions and then we'll, talk with them and they will decide. Based on your injury, based on everything you're telling me and based on, a screening, can we help you? How did I get those people to come in? It is all about the marketing strategy.
[00:12:36] Now, I don't think in this day and age, this is 2023. You can have a marketing strategy. That does not include some form or fashion of digital marketing. You've got to pick your channels. Do you want to be on instagram? Do you want to be on facebook? Do you want to be on tiktok? Do you want to be on linkedin?
[00:12:58] There are so many [00:13:00] platforms right now and you have to pick who And where you want to be like you have to pick your who and then you have to say where do they hang out? And then that's the platform that I need to be on, right? I personally started with Facebook because 10 years ago, Facebook was the place to be, right?
[00:13:26] Facebook was the place to be. Fast forward. Facebook caters to an older population, right? But Instagram has really taken off. And I personally enjoy Instagram, right? So if are on any channels, you'll see that I spend the majority of my time on Instagram. I share stories, pictures, I create reels, I post daily, multiple times.
[00:13:52] And I, some of the posts... Then automatically transfers to Facebook. Now, if I was [00:14:00] catering to a much older population of people, I, if I was catering to your seventies and. 80s, I would be on Facebook all the time. I wouldn't necessarily be on Instagram, but I'm on Instagram quite a bit because the people who are in their forties and fifties are on Instagram now too.
[00:14:19] But you know who I cater to a lot people in their thirties, people in their thirties have been coming into my clinic because they're all have various forms of, hands, elbow and shoulder problems, nerve problems. And they're all on Instagram, right? And then TikTok, TikTok blew up, and I'm like, no, dude, I don't got time for TikTok, right?
[00:14:42] People are just, swiping through TikTok, but I didn't really have the space. The capacity to now take on another channel. And I was like, for my clinic, I'm not doing tick tock for the people that I'm talking to, [00:15:00] I'm not singing and dancing. Like I'm not making a fool of myself. Not tick tock is not for me.
[00:15:05] Facebook, Instagram. Are my two top ones. I do post on linked in for my clinic. So I started actually with a lot of linked in and facebook. When I first started 10 years ago, I used to post and connect with people on linked in quite a bit. And it was because I was looking to connect with surgeons.
[00:15:25] I was looking to connect with people who were in the workers comp world. And so you have to look at what type of clinic you want. And then what are you willing to do to go after that? And then it's trial and error. So I had to do a lot of trial and error. Where did it work? Where did it work for me? How consistent can I be with social media?
[00:15:48] Social media was huge. And then the other thing that I did to bring a lot of attention to my clinic was YouTube. YouTube is a platform. So [00:16:00] nowadays, so important, you can have a long form content place and a short form content place. So Facebook, you can do long form because you can do lives on there.
[00:16:11] You can do longer videos. Instagram is the same way now too. You can do a lot of lives on there. And YouTube, you could create longer form videos. And then from the longer form videos, then you chop them up into smaller form videos that you can share that then sit on reels on Instagram or on Facebook or things like that.
[00:16:34] And if your page, your population of people are on TikTok, then you can create those things into TikTok, right? I don't know about them. Snapchats. That was more like people love the filters and had fun, but I'm not sure from a business standpoint for therapy. I don't know. I hadn't heard anyone in the therapy world really make it big on Snapchat, but hey, I don't know everything.
[00:16:59] And I don't know [00:17:00] everyone but the people that I do know, none of them are on Snapchat in terms of looking at it from a platform to build their business, they might be on there to use a fun filters and, do whatever. But from a business standpoint, you're thinking like, how am I going to attract these people?
[00:17:18] How am I going to get them to, come and take a look at what I have to offer? So that's for workshops. That's for awareness. You just have to do a ton of marketing and there's tons of different ways to do it. Digital marketing is just one of them. Now marketing to doctors. Do I think it's worth it?
[00:17:40] So when I first started 10 years ago, I thought for sure it was worth it because I was definitely in the workers comp game and in the insurance game. I don't think it's that important to me now in the phase that my business is currently in to put a lot of [00:18:00] emphasis on. marketing to doctors. Do we still do it?
[00:18:04] Absolutely. Because why would you cut your foot off? If some of it works, great, but I don't put a lot of my time, energy and money into it. But again, it always is going to come down to what kind of clinic you want and what are you willing to do? I'm no longer willing. To drive around, go knock on doctor's doors, bring them a box of cookies, and wait for them to give me five seconds of their time.
[00:18:34] I'm not willing to do that. I have other things that are so much more pressing for me to do. But if you're getting started, if you're just getting started and you have no freaking patience, go do that. It is low costing but lots of time, right? Lots of time, but low cost. So go do that. Do your face to face.
[00:18:57] Do the, get to know their [00:19:00] staff. See what they want. If you're working with surgeons, if you're working with doctors, I did a ton of that when I first started now. So I have also build my reputation. I've also created some of that face to face time with them at the beginning. Now there's new people in my community, but I haven't had the opportunity.
[00:19:22] To go and do that as much, but I do it in other ways if I could connect with them on LinkedIn, if I can connect with them via the phone, if I could connect with them via email, text messaging, there's different ways to do it where you can get that face to face time and you can market yourself and say, okay, hey, you have these type of patients.
[00:19:44] How can I help you? You have post surgical patients and you want a trusted, certified hand therapist to help you? How can I help you? I'm right here. My name is Huang Tran. I'm an occupational therapist and certified hand therapist. You have [00:20:00] people that you need. To get a certain type of therapy. So you're your surgeries look good.
[00:20:07] I do that. I do that. And then you do a bunch of that. You do a bunch of that. And you have to be, you have to be top of mind and then you have to stay top of mind. And so it requires a lot of face time that I just don't have. But if you are just starting out, dude, You should have time in spades and then you just got to go knock on those doors.
[00:20:35] You got to go knock on those doors and sometimes people are going to let you in. Sometimes people are not going to let you in. Some people are going to be just taking your cookies and being like, why? And then you'll never fucking see a patient from them ever. And that's going to be okay, right? That's right.
[00:20:54] Because sometimes that happens, but then there's going to be someone that they really like you and they [00:21:00] see your work after one or two patients, they're like, man, Tom, you've got great my patients have spoken so well, but I'm going to send you more patients, right? That's how it started. A little bit by a little bit.
[00:21:14] Overall, the marketing strategy has a multiple layers and nowadays you can't just pick one, right? If you're talking to a therapist that's owned their clinic 30, 40 years ago, and they're not changing with the times and they're, Oh, back in the day, I just market to the, doctors and they sent me all their patients.
[00:21:37] That is not the case. Maybe there'd be like this one off person that lives in this little town and the doctor only wants to send them and there's no kickbacks. Okay, whatever. I don't know. Who knows? And they have some kind of really, Hey, that's great. But I'll tell you what, that's like less than 1%.
[00:21:58] I can't imagine so few [00:22:00] people have that. The majority of us have multiple, have to have multiple layers and a, to this marketing strategy, that's going to help. Bring awareness to your community about what your clinic is about, what you do, how you solve people's problems. Once they start seeing it over and over, then they'll be like maybe this person can help me.
[00:22:26] So you want to pick and create your marketing strategy off of what you want for your therapy clinic. What kind of therapy clinic are you going to create? And then you have to say, am I willing to do it? Do I have the time or do I have the money? That's the only two things you have the time or do you have the money?
[00:22:48] You have the time. Usually it's because you don't got the money, so you put your money in the tank. If you have the money, are you paying someone to do this, right? Or different ways, right? But [00:23:00] what are you willing to do? And then once you are decide what you're willing to do and what type of clinic your You want to create, then you're going to do a lot of trial and error and give yourself a chance.
[00:23:14] Like I usually say, I'm going to try anything new. I give myself at least a minimum of three months to really try something. You do it one time and you fail, like that's not saying anything. You do a second time, a third time, then you're like, okay, maybe that's not working. Let me change my strategy, don't be so quick to just.
[00:23:32] Oh, it doesn't work that one time. It doesn't work. No, it's gonna work. It's just like maybe you didn't execute well. Maybe it was your plan wasn't good. Maybe you have to give it another chance, but it's through trial and error. And sometimes when you're working with someone, they can help you cut through that trial and error because they understand or know what has worked and what hasn't worked.
[00:23:54] Yeah, so I hope thank you for that question or the series of question. And if this [00:24:00] has helped you, if you're, if you are an occupational therapist starting your business or you have been in business, but you're like, oh. Something's got to give because I'm not growing the way I would like to grow. I hope that this video has really helped you to take a couple of things into consideration and maybe you can make some changes and improvements that can help you evolve your business.
[00:24:27] If you like this, please hit the like button and. You can share with anyone else that you know, that's going into business that would need this type of video and feel free to leave me a comment. If you have any questions or you have other questions, your questions help me to create free content like this for you.
[00:24:48] And I want to create topics and talk about things that are really going to help you. So I really appreciate your feedback and I will talk to you next time. Thanks.[00:25:00]
