There are many companies in America, and perhaps in your own community, that are perceived as being successful and well established even though people have never seen a single building they own or met a single direct employee of the company. The impression alone is strongly beneficial because a perception of size and success leads to increased trust and new business. How did these companies create this impression in the minds of their customers? They advertised with sufficient quality and frequency.

Even though physical therapy practices and home health agencies typically have small marketing budgets, you can use this same phenomenon to your benefit. The trick is to narrowly define an audience that is small enough for your budget to achieve an effective frequency, but high-value enough to produce a return on investment. Then advertise to them with high quality ads, at a sufficient frequency, for a sufficient duration. Here are some guidelines.

Audience: For physical therapy and medical home health, doctors, their staff, and discharge planners serve as a high-value audience. They can and do make multiple referrals per month. For private-duty homecare providers, older adults in high-income areas make up the high-value audience. More than ten percent of people age 65+ use home health each year, and multimillionaires have the means to pay privately. If you target an audience of only 1,600 affluent seniors, that means you are targeting an audience in control of 160 homecare cases annually. What market share would you need within that group to make a measurable difference for your agency?

Frequency: To have customers perceive your physical therapy practice or home health agency as an important player in your field, they need to see your ads at least once per week for at least 12 weeks in broadcast media, including online advertising. More is better. In direct mail, plan for at least monthly for twelve months. Knowing the frequency you need, knowing what frequency can be achieved in each medium, and calculating these numbers with your budget, lets you know how large your target audience can be.

Targeting: To look huge on a small budget, you need to use media that can be finely targeted to a very specific audience. The three media that consistently allow for tightly controlled targeting in home health and physical therapy marketing are door-to-door, direct mail, and Facebook. Door-to-door for home health may not be legal in every state, so check local regulations. In direct mail, you can mail to a list of specific doctors (especially your active and loyal doctors). You can also purchase a mail list of high-income seniors or low-income seniors. You can specify the exact quantity of mail pieces you want to send so that you can budget in the right frequency.

Facebook has a large, diverse audience and a platform that allows for advanced targeting. You can specify audiences by job title (for example: discharge planners, family practitioners, etc.). You can specify audiences by geography, age, gender, and affluent zip codes. On Facebook, you can control the size of your target audience by narrowing any of your audience parameters. Facebook does not give you direct control over frequency, but you can increase or decrease the frequency within your ad set by changing your budget or audience size.

Extra Credit: Another element of marketing strategies that creates the impression of success is the multimedia approach. If an audience member sees you consistently online, in their email, and in-person, that reinforces the image of success greater than would a single-media approach.

With a narrowly defined, high-value audience, you can become as ever-present in the minds of your customers as major national advertisers. Brazzell Marketing Agency practices marketing strategies that can accomplish this for budgets starting as low as $145 per month. Explore our website or call 866-272-3799 to explore options.