Plymouth Physical Therapy Seeks to Compete with HOPTs and POPTs
Plymouth Physical Therapy Specialists is a private practice with 24 locations throughout Southeast Michigan.
One of the challenges facing Plymouth PT is helping people in the community understand they can go anywhere for their physical therapy. People who get hospitalized for an injury or surgery are typically referred to a hospital or physician owned clinic within that system and are unaware they have choices. Through their education efforts, Plymouth PT aims to ensure people understand all their options for physical therapy.
Lindsey Thurman, the Director of Internal Marketing at Plymouth PT, says that prior to working with Breakthrough, their marketing was scattered. “It’s like we were throwing spaghetti on the wall to see if it sticks,” she said. “We did advertising, print mail, free screen days. A lot of stuff that would work for one clinic, but not another. We weren’t attracting compliant patients that wanted our help. We didn’t have a well-oiled system in place.”
One of the main issues that Lindsey faced was not knowing which marketing efforts worked and which ones didn’t. There was no system for tracking return on investment of their marketing activities. As a result, time and money were often wasted on activities that didn’t drive value.
One Complete System to Solve Marketing Needs
Lindsey first came across Breakthrough in a webinar hosted by Breakthrough’s Co-Founder, Chad Madden. The webinar was about how hosting workshops can help attract patients to your clinic, and Lindsey recognized that this model could work well for them.
“All of our staff are great educators, so it was a natural fit for us,” Lindsey said.
She also liked how she and her staff could use one system to access multiple physical therapy specific marketing strategies and she recognized how well this model could scale across Plymouth’s multiple clinic locations.
“There are ads, workshops, email campaigns, lead management, coaching, ROI tracking. There are so many resources Breakthrough provides for us that we didn’t have.” -Lindsey Thurman, Director of Internal Marketing, Plymouth Physical Therapy Specialists
Getting Staff to Buy-In
As with most private practices, all staff members wear a lot of hats, so everyone has a say in the marketing program. There was some initial resistance to trying a new system.
“At first, our staff was concerned about the cost of Breakthrough. But they didn’t realize how much comes with it and how effective it is,” Lindsey said. “So we piloted Breakthrough at one location and invited all our staff to come to the first couple of workshops.”
“Once they saw we had a crowd of people coming in just for information…and then they saw that these patients were very compliant, they’re doing their exercises, they want to get better…before long, other clinics wanted to implement Breakthrough at their locations too.”
“Breakthrough has really streamlined our marketing for new patients, as well as helped with our past patient reactivation.”
-Lindsey Thurman, Director of Internal Marketing, Plymouth Physical Therapy Specialists
Using a Patient Demand Platform to Consistently Attract Compliant Patients
Plymouth PT leverages Breakthrough’s Premium product for a full-circle marketing solution. Without Breakthrough Premium, Lindsey and her team would have to use multiple, incompatible systems to perform complete lifecycle marketing from beginning to end. Plus those systems would not offer marketing strategies specifically aimed at marketing physical therapy.
“With Breakthrough, you’re going to get a system that allows you to run proven marketing strategies that you know have been tested by hundreds of other practices and that work,” she said.
Below are the main strategies Plymouth PT leverages Breakthrough for to generate consistent patient visits:
Facebook Advertising
Breakthrough creates direct-response online advertising campaigns that are proven to generate ad responders. Campaigns target a specific pain point, such as lower back pain or rotator cuff issues. By directly addressing their target audience’s pain point and offering valuable, educational information, Plymouth PT effectively compels people to click on their ads and submit contact information.
Plymouth’s St. Clair Shore location relies heavily on Facebook advertising for generating new patients. In 2022, between January and July, the Facebook Ad Cost Per Lead was $23.06 and the Facebook Ad Cost Per Plan of Care was $152.75.
Pre-Built Landing Pages
Ads are just one piece of a campaign. When someone clicks on an ad, they get directed to a pre-built landing page optimized for conversion. The landing page educates the prospect further on their condition and presents physical therapy as the solution. It captures the ad responder’s information through a compelling call-to-action such as a workshop registration or content download.
Plymouth PT typically promotes workshops on their landing pages. In the first half of 2022, Plymouth generated 3,112 workshop registrants through Breakthrough landing pages.
Workshops
Once someone signs up to attend a workshop, the practice staff has an opportunity to demonstrate credibility and expertise. Plymouth PT’s staff is full of great educators. They leveraged Breakthrough’s Workshop Training modules to plan for their workshops and sharpen their presentation skills.
Plymouth PT’s largest clinic typically books 30 new patients a month from workshops. In the the first half of 2022, Plymouth PT has booked over 900 first appointments through workshops across 14 locations.
Email Campaigns
Plymouth PT uses the 50+ pre-written, ready-to-go email campaigns included in the Breakthrough platform to engage their patient list and reactivate past patients. These proven campaigns are written leveraging data gathered from working with hundreds of practices. And Breakthrough regularly updates its campaign database based on what’s performed well in beta tests and historically for hundreds of customers.
Email campaigns help Plymouth PT get more value from existing and past patients. During the pandemic, Plymouth used email campaigns to keep patients engaged and ready to come back to the clinic when it was safe to do so.
In the first half of 2022, Plymouth PT has generated the following results from emails sent with Breakthrough:
- 145,000 Emails Sent
- Average Open Rate of 35.6%
- 937 Total Clicks
- 1,981 Total Replies
ROI Intelligence
Prior to working with Breakthrough, Plymouth PT had no system for measuring results from marketing investments. Now, Plymouth has ROI tracking implemented to be able to track the performance of campaigns all the way through revenue created. They can track how patients hear about them, how much they’ve spent on marketing, and how much revenue is produced by those marketing dollars.
Every Plan-of-Care resulting from a Facebook Ad responder costs, on average, $399.10. An average POC at Plymouth PT is worth $1K, so Plymouth PT is generating a 250% ROI from advertising efforts.
Training and Community
Breakthrough provides over 1,000+ hours of on-demand training resources through “Breakthrough University” to help staff members implement the recommended marketing strategies. For example, when you do a workshop, you get presentation templates, an example workshop recording, and a variety of best practices. Staff members also get one-on-one coaching with a dedicated customer success manager to ensure they get the best results possible.
“Breakthrough University is a fantastic resource that’s made us more successful,” Lindsey said. “Once we put in these systems we realized what we were lacking. They helped us improve our marketing as a whole.”
Another advantage of working with Breakthrough is the opportunity to network with other practice owners and staff at in-person events exclusive to Breakthrough customers.
“Breakthrough is going to give your staff the resources and tools to educate your patients,” Lindsey said. “Plus, you’re going to get a whole resource of other clinics and people you can talk to. I’ve networked with a lot of people from other states to be able to make our marketing more successful and in turn, taken what I’ve learned and passed that on to other people.”
Record Growth Continues During and Post Pandemic
Plymouth PT started working with Breakthrough right before the beginning of the pandemic. Breakthrough helped them continue to stay profitable during the pandemic, and growth has continued ever since.
“June 2020 was a record year for us and we only keep going up. We were able to open 3 clinics in a pandemic and we’ve hired more staff than I’ve ever seen us hire before.” -Lindsey Thurman, Director of Internal Marketing, Plymouth Physical Therapy Specialists
The email campaigns they ran during the pandemic helped to boost patient visits during 2020 and 2021. Plymouth PT is now able to beat the local competition and attract their ideal customer: Compliant patients who prioritize their health.
“We now know that there’s a lot of people out there who aren’t looking for pain medicine,” Lindsey said.” People who aren’t ready for surgery. And we’re able to help those people. If you’re passionate about what you do, you want your practice to succeed and you want to educate other people, then Breakthrough is a great fit for you.”
