How do I get more people to book an appointment with me online?
I'm currently working at a physical therapy clinic and I have an online appointment book that needs to be filled up with clientele. Right now I'm on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites to promote my business. I get people to like my posts but not click on the "book now" link that I have on Facebook or view my website. I need more clients but don't know how to go about it.
Expert Answers
Sort by Date
Sort by Votes
May 9, 2019
Share your online booking schedule link on multiple places and encourage people to book with a call to action. Here are some great ideas to help you get more clients to book on the schedule: https://blog.supersaas.com/6_ways_to_get_more_appointments_on_your_schedule
Dec 28, 2015
I would figure out what the current customers love about your services.
STEP 1 - Identify target demographic
STEP 2 - I would then run a Facebook ad or Google PPC campaign promoting X service to the target demographic.
STEP 3 - Setup Calendly.com and include the booking link to that campaign so it's automated for you and the customer.
If you would like to connect with me on all social:
https://inigoapp.com/m/public/profile/7A5F52350B459046B9136FC8C0404986?sh=1451336339
Dec 14, 2015
Write good articles about the benefits of your service. Make sure they are shocking, fun, and useful and can go viral. Have a booking button in each on of those articles. Offer a free session?
Dec 16, 2015
Thanks Paul! I've post great articles and other health information in regards to wellness and massage therapy on my facebook page. However, I get more massage therapists from all over liking and sharing the content rather than people actually wanting to purchase a massage treatment. Offering free sessions only draw in one and done clients. They are only interested in deals and whats free. I'm looking for clients who benefits from having massage therapy as part of their wellness routine and so they become consistent clients.
Nov 6, 2015
We are mainly talking about promotions. Be creative and take actionable decisions. For example, set a time in a month to run a specific promotions, 10% for 30 mins massage, e.g., and send it to potentials right away. Target group per group. Maybe working one weekend with women and even associating with other business in the beauty or wellness industry for packages costs may work great. Find 3 business you could team up with and come up with a package at a really good price that could entice customers and bring business to the owners. You are not the only woman in a situation like this, and when associating with others, cross marketing campaigns have shown to be really effective.
Nov 7, 2015
The clinic ran a 20%off your first treatment coupon to all their clients and to all those who we came in contact with when we promoted at a local gym. The clients only came in that one time and never re-booked because they complained the prices were too high. I'm trying not to attract clients who are always looking for a discount or a freebie, because 9x out of 10, they won't rebook as often as they should for their own wellbeing until you offer them another discount or freebie.
Nov 6, 2015
Hi Pricilla,
I would look into targeted ads on Facebook so that you can reach a new and more specific audience. You might also look into Google Adwords to target local audiences who may be searching for your services online.
Hope that helps!
Charlotte Chipperfield
The Wine Key LLC.
Nov 10, 2015
Yes, everyone seems to forget that f.e. for my business the two main providers are Google and Bing. Even though we have good positioning on several social media. I would spend some money there.
Nov 6, 2015
Is your bait where the fish are? It's always nice to receive a few likes, except what if the likes are coming from the same half dozen friends and family? When I think physical therapy, I don't necessarily conjure up the crowd that is online. I see a bunch of aging, mostly off-line people who could consume your services and their insurance would pay for it. It seems to me that people in need of your services are going to ask their nurse or MD about what to do next. The nurse/MD then likely refers to their known and trusted list of therapists. Are you on that list? For most of the seething mass of MDs in your area? Maybe it's time to take some nurses and doctors out to lunch or figure out some other way to get on their list of service providers.
Nov 6, 2015
I hate giving away good advice for free. This is how I pay the bills, but here goes. People like it when you treat them special and don't come in just selling. Rather than trying to get them to set an appointment, offer a free "assessment". You could very easily and very cheaply do this through my automated mobile platform. You could send out a four or five question survey through their mobile phone. Then after gathering some basic information you could come back offering free advice and specific remedies for their particular situation (like I'm doing now with you) and then try and set an appointment because you have an approach specialized to their needs. By using a totally compliant, automated, and opt-in platform like mine you could do these for pennies. And, you will have captured their cell phone information. By sending 1 or 2 messages a month offering advice, techniques for self massage, etc, you will be remarketing like a champion. You can set up a drip campaign. Use messages on FB to get people to opt-in with keywords. Use it on printed material. And you could use your monthly messages to drive people to your social media pages. building top of mind awareness. I could set this whole system up for a couple hundred dollars and a low monthly fee. God bless.
Nov 6, 2015
I like how you're not trying to sell anything :-) - But on a different note, I do like the suggestion and think this is very much underestimated. A lot of business owners are sitting back with hands on their social media and waiting for customers to storm the premises only to wake up one day and see their business drowned right in front of their eyes.
Are you offering this service only for US customers or did you branch out to other countries as well? Would be very much interested in your solution if you can offer this service to us here in Ireland. Let me know and please connect on LinkedIn if you wish. Would love to learn more about your services and your business. All the best
Carsten
Nov 7, 2015
The reason I feel social media would be a way to gain clients is because everyone has a cellphone. Everyone is texting, updating their posts on facebook or instagram etc. So I thought promoting online would be a way to gain clients. I've used alignable.com to create online coupons and I post it on my social media pages. Not a lot of people respond but they do like my page or they may click on my website. Even though I'm an employee and would like to have more clientele, I'm trying to do what I can to drive more business to myself.
Nov 6, 2015
Priscilla,
You are NOT going to get a lot of new clients using ORGANIC social media. Read this! http://www.themarketingacademy.ca/?p=1769
Do you have a written MARKETING PLAN?
Sounds to me like your are being TACTICAL with your marketing efforts, but your overall STRATEGY might be lagging behind.
Watch this video to help you identify the areas of your business that you must have answers to: https://youtu.be/aDyiI-NxMto
Feel free to contact me if you have more questions.
To your success,
Kevin Toney
the Marketing Coach
Nov 6, 2015
Ed is right - PT is a NEED not a want. Have you marketed to doctor's offices? Think orthopedists, rheumatologists, neurologists - anyone who could refer you.
Nov 7, 2015
The owner/DPT of the physical therapy clinic I currently work at markets to doctor's offices and also attends events to network and promote all the services.
Nov 7, 2015
Yes, he does. I've promoted at a local gym with some of my co-workers which are physical therapy aides and physical therapists. He just started this March adding massage therapy to his practice. I'm the first and only massage therapist he has at the moment. I mentioned mailing out flyers to all is past and present clientele that lives locally, which he did, but he also told me that its wasn't as cost effective and he slowed down on the mailings.
Nov 5, 2015
Hi Priscilla, great question. You need to be out there, promoting your business with every opportunity that you can create. Being on Social Media is great, but this is only 1/4 of the activity you would need to do in order to promote your business. The other 1/4 is your website, update your profiles (LinkedIn/ MosaicHub etc.). And unfortunately, don't really know how else I could say this: 1/2 of the day to day activity to fill your calendar is sales...in the most traditional way possible.
It's always good to have an online strategy in place, and nowadays most businesses do but they always forget the basics of sales which is, being out there and finding clients, booking meetings and closing deals.
Now, in your case being a physical therapist, there probably are limits to what you can do but you should make it your goal to have at least 1 - 1 1/2 hours per day a big sales related activity. Sherry Holub is making a few good points which I can only encourage you to try:
1. Talk to medium to large size corporations (some of them even have gyms, it would be a perfect fit to be on site and help their employees recover much faster, be more in tune with themselves etc. If you don't know how to talk to those companies, feel free to connect with me, I am more than happy to provide you with a few tips.
2. Go to networking events. You may not get immediate clients, but similar to online visibility, this activity promotes your business offline.
3. Promote your business with flyers - A lot of people would tell you to stay away from this, however in your case I think it could make a difference. You would need to print a lot of flyers though in order to get any return. Don't even start with just 5000...you need to think much bigger than that. Anything below 25,000 flyers will not give you a decent return. Cover your entire area if you can. There is companies who can help you with the distribution. The reason why flyers can work in your case is that if they are done properly, people will remember them. A small tip: Put a picture of yourself on the flyer, people will remember a face rather than a name or business name. Also, if your budget allows print flyers and put a magnetic business card on it (also the business card should have your picture on it). Even though people may throw away the flyer they will definitely keep the business card (even if you don't have the budget for a magnetic card, make sure you provide your business card as well. Cards are more likely to be kept than flyers. But combined will result in a much higher return.
4. Look at your website and SEO (there is better people here to advise you on that, but keep it in mind).
5. Update your profiles. Your MosaicHub profile could already promote your business. But is incomplete. No showing of your website, Facebook page, linkedIn profile etc.
6. Become a member of your local or regional Chamber of Commerce. You need to see how active your local chamber is and if it would benefit you to join. A lot of small community chambers are not active and are money sucking machines without giving any return on your investment. Regional or County chambers are usually much better as they promote and connect businesses all over the county but also can help you target locally.
7. Join a networking group. Networking is important and a group might be able to help you either find clients or become clients of you. Most networking and referral groups will allow you to sit in once or twice as a guest before you need to make a decision if you would like to join them or not. They also have a competition clause which will only allow one type of business within the group so it is good to promote your business that way as it becomes much more targeted.
8. Start a letter marketing campaign. Create a powerful (physical) letter and send it to potential businesses (think as Sherry already pointed out medium to large size corporations in your area). This could be very beneficial for them and of course for you. Create a list of 100 companies that you would like to work with.
9. Some of the larger multinationals such as Apple/ Microsoft/ EMC etc. are also taking local companies on board to become supplier for their employees. That means you could create an offering just for Apple employees (as an example) where they would receive a certain discount if they come to you. This promotes your business and provides large corporations with a "See how good we are to our employees" kind of feel.
10. Think about your core offering, could you change your offering to sell other products or services? I know for example a friend of mine has his own physical therapy clinic and he teamed up with a healthy drink and food supplier to help his clients with a range of dietary items that could benefit them (depending on the clients needs of course). It's aloe vera based products (I think you know what company I'm talking about...) and he does very well in both industries. He doesn't even have to sell the aloe vera, he simply recommends it to people (I think he even created a package deal where his clients would get a free bottle with the session) and afterwards they will buy more from him.
So, as you can see, there is plenty of things you can do from an offline perspective. Don't ignore offline, this is far more powerful than most people think. Relying solely on online marketing and promotion is simply wrong and anybody who says otherwise has either never started a business or has so much money coming out their ears that they don't really care how long it takes for their business to take off.
If any of the 10 points interest you to discover further and how you could make a much more powerful impact on your sales and bookings, please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and I'm happy to set up a Skype session with you to discuss this further.
All the best and I'm sure if you keep it simple, you will fill your books in no time.
Kind regards
Carsten
Nov 7, 2015
I used some of your advice by updating my profile, mailing out flyers (which the company did when I suggested it ) but the owner didn't see I good return on that, so he slowed down on the mailings. I'm trying to think of other ways to promote and suggest ideas to the owner. But the final decision is his.
Nov 7, 2015
Normally I don't like flyers but in your business it is a good way to enhance visibility. The return on flyers is very slow and you are barely able to measure the results unless you do something different. You could try and add a voucher to the flyer (have a perforated part of the flyer). In this case you will know when flyers are working. It's the masses and make it a regular exercise. You won't grow the business overnight. There is no such thing as a quick fix and seeing results in any sales related activity (from offline to online) could take anything from 3 - 6 months and sometimes even up to 12 months before you see a return. Make sure your employer has a good mix of online and offline activity. When you post flyers, make sure you post them at least once per quarter or even on a monthly basis. Don't overdo it but monthly should be fine and will give you a return over a 12 month period of approx. 2 - 3%. Good luck :-) - network more and you'll get more clients - easiest way to grow
Nov 5, 2015
Have you tried any of Facebook's targeted advertising (not boosting posts ... but the actual ads)? I have a natural health client who is a guest on a women's health webinar coming up, so I helped her set up her first Facebook ad to drive traffic to the landing page to sign up for the webinar. By the second day, the click through rate was 2% ... which seems low, but isn't actually bad for that type of advertising (and her spend by then was only $6). With the targeted advertising you can pick and choose the audience you want to see your ads and you can make it local to your area as well.
Another option would be to get involved with a medium to large company that is interested in corporate wellness. A friend of mine works at a company who booked a massage therapist to come into the office and give anyone who wanted one 15 minute neck and shoulder massages (awesome, right?!). their employees your way (especially if you offer them a little discount).
Then there's always the local business groups. Just about every city has them where business owners and service providers meet up to network. There is always potential in going to those. In my opinion, everyone can benefit from massage therapy ;)
Hope that helps!
Sherry
Nov 6, 2015
I don't cotton up to the first paragraph but it's your money to waste. The second paragraph is a very, very, good idea. I know a guy that gets medium and larger type companies to pay him for providing "spiritual" support. So, there's no telling what these people will pay for. You should do this for sure. Third paragraph is a pretty good idea too. Nice job Sherry.
Nov 6, 2015
Hi Rolando and thanks for the comment. Just to add a little more to that first paragraph – the webinar is a $97 webinar and 2 people had signed up directly from the Facebook advertising campaign (which, at the time, she had paid $6 for "clicks"). So I wouldn't totally discount that one as a waste of money. It really depends on how effective your marketing message is (and the landing page that you're driving traffic too) and making sure you're targeting the right audience.
Nov 6, 2015
I agree with Rolando. The first option, for this type of business, is not a viable for her. She needs clients - facebook or twitter is more about branding and awareness of her business. Something she already did. Second and third options a re great ones though.
Nov 6, 2015
I totally agree that Facebook and Twitter is predominantly for awareness and branding (as well as engagement), but I consider the advertising through those channels as separate from the "social" part of it. My nutritionist client is only spending $50 total on her ad campaign. Her particular ad was a webinar, but it could have easily been an add for her nutritional consultation services. In the case of a massage therapist, targeting the add only to the local area (so it's only shown to people in that area) could potentially bring in a new client for her. I wouldn't even have mentioned it if I haven't had my own clients with micro budgets have some measure of success with Facebook ads.
Nov 6, 2015
Recently stumbled on this article that gives a good overview of Facebook advertising on a small budget and how to make it work: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-ads-on-a-budget/
Nov 7, 2015
Thanks Sherry! I tried facebook ads but was not as successful with gaining clients. It drove some traffic to my page, but not much. I've promoted in local gyms but not a big interest unless i'm giving massage treatments away for free. But even with a discount or giving complimentary 15min. massage treatments, doesn't generate loyal clients. 9x out of 10 the clients either no show, cancel, or they would come in for the treatment just because the price was cheap or free. I educate the clients on the benefits of getting regular massage treatments and they seem very interested in receiving more treatments, but the #1 complaint I get is..."I can't afford to get get them regularly."
Nov 8, 2015
Hi Priscilla – It's good you tried those things, because marketing really is trial and error and it works best when you don't focus on just one thing. I've noticed that freebies may pull in a couple legit new people, but they also pull in what seems to be a majority of tire kickers or just people who want free stuff and never intend to buy! If the one "pain point" people mention is being unable to afford regular massage, crafting some specific marketing that addresses that point could pull a few more of those people in. Like how restaurants and coffee places sometimes have a punch card type of promotion, you could try something like that. 1 free after every 10, 50% off after every 5, or something to that effect. Market it like a "club". Also when you're mentioning the benefits, mention that even a massage a couple times a month can be beneficial. Some massage therapists also offer a discount if people purchase x number of treatments in advance. Just some ideas off the top of my head!
Nov 5, 2015
Hi Priscilla I presume your challenge is getting more clients versus how they make an appointment. That said, you are seeking an audience that NEEDS but may not particularly WANT your services. Social media is all the rage for getting the word out these days but if you really want to engage new clients I suggest you start introducing yourself to the providers that will send clients your way.
Nov 6, 2015
I'm am continually dismayed at how many small and medium sized businesses continue to place their faith in social media. There is scant evidence that FB generates new business. I'm not hammering social media, It has its role, but getting new business isn't one of them.
Nov 7, 2015
Thanks Ed! I'll look into networking events in my town to attend.
Nov 7, 2015
Priscilla networking events are a great way to go. You can augment that by getting to know the office managers in practitioners offices- it's a great way to become known. In fields such as yours integrity is established through delivery of quality service and readily shared amongst those who refer and those who utilize your services.
Thanks Cauvee' for the advice!