PT Marketing

The following is a response to the March Topic of the Month on the APTA Student Message Board (a great resource for communicating with other PT students - must be a member to log in). I placed this here because I felt it was too long for a message board (a little ironic I suppose)... Enjoy :)

Firstly, I would like to say this is a great and vital topic for our profession, good job Sean in picking it. Secondly, I would like to apologize for my lengthy post and hope you bear with me.

Last year at PT 2006, Dr. Stanley Paris gave the prestigious McMillan lecture. Dr. Paris said we need to do "something desperate to establish an identity for this profession....Think of the medical profession, and you think of illness...Think of dentists and it's teeth. Of veterinary and it's animals. Chiropractors and it's back pain. Athletic trainers and it's sport. Physical therapy and it's—what?" He argued for continued aggressive marketing, saying "It is the Guide and Vision 2020 that will get us to the summit, but it's marketing that will have us reach the tipping point."

Under the idea of the Guide we can market ourselves by the 4 systems we are focused on treating: Musculoskeletal, Neurological, Cardiopulmonary, and Integumentary. The trouble is all of the various niches that break off of these 4 systems. Just take a look at the 18 sections in the APTA and I believe 42 SIG's that branch under those sections. While all are not practice area's, my point is that we have such a wide field it is difficult to know what exactly to market. Furthermore, we are in constant battles (legally and philosophically) to change what PT is (i.e. DPT as a clinical designator, etc.) and this dynamic factor adds to the difficulty of marketing.

In taking on a marketing initiative it is vital to not get pigeon-holed into being something we aren't, such as the "PT-massage guys" made fairly popular by a few early Seinfeld episodes. APTA does have a number of marketing strategies and materials that they make available and I think they do a good job covering some of the basic rehab functions we serve. With as much "constructive criticism" as the APTA receives, having been part of the Student Assembly Nom Com and being more involved with APTA in general, I have come to realize they do a very good job and they seem to utilize all of the available strategies while maintaining a conservative feel. For those that have not seen all of their approaches recently, they include PT Month topics such as "walking for exercise", "bike right, bike fit", and other campaigns such as avoiding "blackberry thumb"/"video gamers thumb". An alternative to this is the American Academy of Orthopaedic Manual PT's (AAOMPT) slogan “You’ve got drugs, you’ve got surgery, or you’ve got US.”

When I take part in community outreach efforts which include going to classrooms from elementary school all the way up to college level students, my starting point is explaining that PT's work in the 4 systems discussed earlier. I then go on to put up a diagram I put together that breaks off into parts that include "rehabilitation", "prevention", "education", "research", and "health & wellness". This seems to help people understand what the profession entails a little bit better.

I am not sure the best way to market ourselves, although I have a few more ideas... but I will save them for now until I can be more confident with these ideas... I look forward to hearing all of the other responses on this topic as it can be one that highly influences our future as a profession.