I recently interviewed Physiotherapist Greg Todd where he shared his strategy to getting new patients from your local community. It’s simple and doesn’t have to take much time either.

Greg has helped over 1,000 PTs grow their businesses and owns a 7-figure physiotherapy clinic in the U.S.. I first met Greg at a bar at a Clickfunnels marketing event in the U.S. and ever since then, we’ve been very good friends. He's a high-energy guy that’s regularly invited to big clinic owner events all over North America where you’ll see him jumping into crowds like a rockstar.

Now let's get into how his "Big 45" strategy works. This strategy should be a part of every clinic's marketing plan and will give you community marketing ideas for physiotherapy clinics, massage therapy, chiropractic, and dental clinics too.

1. Figure out who your ideal patient is and who has them

You want to create 45 relationships in the following 3 categories. 

1. Providers - 15 relationships

2. Community - 15 relationships

3. Local Businesses - 15 relationships.

For example, say you are a Physiotherapist and you see a lot of patients with Plantar Fasciitis. So your ideal patient could be runners. Or if you see a lot of fitness-related knee or shoulder injuries it could be Cross fit enthusiasts.

Next, once you figure out who your ideal customer is, you want to find out what groups they hang out in regularly in your community. A great place to look for groups is meetup.com. You can find any type of group you want there along with the date and time they meet.

Prefer to learn via video? Watch the entire interview here:

Greg talked about if he was going after runners. He would go to a running group in his community that’s big where he lives in Tampa, Florida called Blue Sharks. Runners meet every week there to train for upcoming marathons.

But the big mistake he sees clinic owners make is they try to get before giving. Instead, you want to immerse yourself in the group and provide value first. Go to 5 meetups for that one group. Talk to the people there. Eventually, people will start talking about their snagging injuries. Then what you do is go to the head of the group and say...

“Hey I just talked to Susan, James, Kate, and Chris and they all said they’re struggling with plantar fasciitis. And the last thing we want is to have them going into a race with this problem. Is there anything I can do because I’m a Physiotherapist and treat this all day. I could speak to them about this problem and how they can avoid it.”

They always say yes when you do it this way. 

But you need to immerse yourself in the group first and build relationships. Go train there 5-6 times and then offer help. Don’t just go up to the head in your first meeting. They’ll see right through that.

You can do this with other groups like crossfit, basketball, tennis, or any other sport where injuries are likely.

2. Start building authentic relationships

Greg went on to say you don’t need to go to a bunch of groups. Just go to one. One relationship with the head of the group can send you 4-6 new patients every month for free.

However, you don’t have to do this by yourself. I went on to say if you have 5 practitioners at your clinic. Everyone could choose one group. Then one new group per quarter. Eventually, it will have a domino effect where you’ll have a long line of patients waiting to see you.

Just 3 relationships can take a clinic owner from struggling to thriving.

So here’s how to start.

You want to first go after 15 relationships and out of that typically 3 people will start referring to you. If you build up to 5 you probably have a long line of patients that you won’t know what to do with.

Then we went on to talk about the next category - local Businesses.

3. Host a meetup

This time-saving and fast strategy Greg shared can get you 45 referral relationships that once set up only take 1-2 hours per month of maintenance (no favors or rewards either).

It’s simple, you invite local businesses to come together. You could go to local businesses or send a letter in the mail. If you are talking to them in person, you could say the following:

“Hey I’m inviting local business owners to come together to talk about our plans to get our businesses back to full capacity in the next 4 weeks. So I’m reaching out to some of the businesses in our area that have the greatest reputation and I wanted to invite you. It will be on May 20th at 2 pm at [insert location or say Zoom if so]. Would this be something you’d be interested in joining?”

Then you just take one business from every industry. If you are a Physiotherapist or Chiropractor. Take an internal med, orthopedic surgery, personal trainer, etc. You just take one person from every business and cap it. 

That’s it. And if you don’t want to do it in person, you could send an email that says the same thing. Or even better a letter (handwritten works best) that says the same thing but adds this sentence to the end:

“Hey I’m inviting local business owners to come together to talk about our plans to get our businesses back to full capacity in the next 4 weeks. So I’m reaching out to some of the businesses in our area that have the greatest reputation and I wanted to invite you. It will be on May 20th at 2 pm at [insert location or say Zoom]. Would this be something you’d be interested in joining?

If so just shoot me an email to [INSERT YOUR EMAIL] and let me know you’d like to join”

[YOUR NAME]
Owner, [YOUR BUSINESS]”

You can have the meetup at your clinic which is best. If not possible right now, you can have it on Zoom.

Here’s how Greg recommends you start the group whether on Zoom or in person:

“Thank you all for joining me. I'm [YOUR NAME] the owner of [YOUR CLINIC]. And what we wanted to do is bring together businesses to share our plans to be at full capacity in the next 4 weeks.

So I reached out to some of the businesses in our area that have the greatest reputation and that's what's in this room. So what I would like to do is just do a quick one minute introduction of everyone. Then after that we are just going to go around the room and talk about our biggest strengths. Your one minute pitch of what you do for people and what are your plans for opening up."

Then go around and introduce everyone.

What’s great about this is, you’re building value by introducing business owners to each other. Plus everyone is sharing value that you didn’t have to create but since you put this together you’ll get the credit. You just sit back and let them talk.

Then at the end, go around again and ask each person to share the one big takeaway they learned from this meetup.

After everyone finishes just ask this “Did you find value in this? Would you like to do this again next month?

You’ll have people thanking you for putting this on. Saying wow this was great. Whenever Greg shares this strategy with clinic owners it always works to give them a steady flow of referrals. 

Because when you do this once a month you’ll stay top of mind. When someone from the group has a customer, family member, friend, or coworker that could benefit from your services. They’ll think of you. 

Then you’ll start to have other members inviting other local businesses to the meetup and eventually, you could have your big 45 just with businesses. 

And what's great about this strategy is it only takes 1-2 hours a month of maintenance once set up to get you a steady flow of new patients you can depend on. 

There you have it, an effective and time-efficient community marketing plan. So go ahead and write down who your ideal patient is and what businesses and groups they spend time at. Then go implement the two strategies above to get you 5 new patients this month!

How to convert callers into patients using a proven framework

Now before you start forming these relationships, you want to first make sure your front desk knows how to convert callers into patients using a proven framework we see working right now. Because the last thing you want to do is spend time creating these relationships but your front desk is not saying the right things to turn the referrals into patients or worse cause them to go somewhere else.

So that’s why I created the Free Mystery Caller Audit. It lets you know how your front desk is doing on the phone. But not only that, but we will also give you a proven framework for turning callers into patients through ultra-casual short conversions. 

We've analyzed over 2,000,000 phone calls at over 500 clinics across the U.S and Canada that use our software. We found that Clinics who use this framework get on average 37% more new patients a month from the same number of calls than the average clinic.

So don’t leave profits on the table by neglecting the first call. Especially if you’re spending money on advertising.

Click here to get your FREE Mystery Caller Audit and Framework Today

2. Where do I find local community groups?