Stop Marketing Every Healthcare Service the Same Way

When I ask healthcare practice owners where they want to grow, I sometimes hear a version of:

“We just need more patients.”

My next question is usually:

“Which patients?”

Because those are two very different strategies.

A physical therapy practice may have plenty of demand for post-surgical rehab but want to build its sports medicine business.

A chiropractic office may have a full schedule for traditional adjustments while massage therapy rooms sit empty.

An orthopedic practice may want to grow a particular specialty, procedure, or location.

If all three simply tell their marketing agency to “get more leads,” they may generate activity without solving the business problem.

Start With Capacity

Before deciding where to invest in marketing, I like to look at the business itself.

This happens through some workshopping with the owner. We figure out where there is unused capacity or what specific services can accommodate more patients. But we also want to validate that against which services are a strategic priority, have healthy margins, and attract patient populations that stay engaged in the long-term.

Ask yourself: where could growth occur without requiring the owner to personally add another 20 hours to the week?

That last question can be especially important for owner-led practices.

In my book, Is Your Healthcare Practice Stuck?, I use the example of a chiropractor whose traditional chiropractic services are generally booked, while the practice's massage therapy rooms have vacancies.

If that owner simply asks for “more chiropractic leads,” we could succeed at the marketing objective while failing at the business objective.

A better goal is filling unused massage capacity with the right patients.

Now marketing has direction.

Patient Volume Isn't the Only Number That Matters

I'd also want to understand what a patient is worth to the practice over time.

This is where patient lifetime value becomes useful.

You don't need a complicated financial model to start thinking about it.

Ask:

• How many visits does a typical patient have?
• How long does the relationship last?
• Do different services lead to different patterns of care?
• How often do patients complete their recommended plan?
• Are there appropriate complementary services they use?
• How many former patients return when they need care again?

Two marketing campaigns could each generate 20 patients and produce very different financial outcomes.

That's why cost per lead alone doesn't tell me whether marketing is working.

Even cost per new patient doesn't tell the entire story.

Don't Confuse “High Value” With “Charge the Most”

This is where I think the conversation needs some nuance.

A high-value patient isn't necessarily the person receiving your most expensive service.

Value can come from a long-term relationship, with patients following through on an appropriate plan of care.

When trust is built, the patients might return when another legitimate need arises.

High-value patients also bring referrals, write reviews, and strengthen the practice's reputation.

Importantly, I should note that, of course, this should always remain grounded in what's clinically appropriate for the patient.

The point isn't to squeeze more revenue out of each person, but to understand the economics of your practice well enough to make smarter growth decisions.

Marketing Should Reflect Business Priorities

Once you've identified where you want to grow, your marketing can become much more deliberate.

Suppose a PT practice wants to increase its sports rehabilitation business.

That decision should affect everything, including, your patient personas, search strategy, website content, paid advertising, social media posts, referral relationships and measurement.

Now you're not asking your SEO company to simply “increase traffic.”

You're asking whether the practice is becoming more visible to the specific people it wants to serve.

That's a much better business conversation.

More Traffic Can Actually Be Bad Marketing

This is one of those statements that can sound strange coming from a marketer.

I don't always want more website traffic.

I want more of the right traffic. Qualified leads, not just a quantity of leads.

If a practice ranks for search terms that aren't relevant to its services, those visitors don't accomplish much.

If you're paying for those clicks through Google Ads, it's worse. You're paying to attract people you can't help.

My book makes this point in the Everywhere Search System: search strategy should align with both the services a practice provides and the services it has decided to prioritize.

I'd rather have 500 highly relevant website visitors than 5,000 people who were never realistic prospective patients.

Growth Is About Choices

Marketing strategy requires deciding where you're going before deciding how you'll get there.

Before asking:

“How can we get more patients?”

Try asking:

“Where specifically do we want the practice to grow?”

Then look at capacity, economics, patient needs, competitive opportunity, and the long-term value of those relationships.

Once those answers are clear, deciding what to market becomes much easier.

And your marketing dollars have a much better chance of producing the growth you actually wanted in the first place.

If your practice is investing in marketing but you're not sure whether it's aligned with the areas where you actually want to grow, that's a good conversation for us to have. You can book a discovery meeting with me to look at the bigger picture.