It’s easy to forget that better copy generates more business. By focusing on user experience and making your website aesthetically pleasing, quality of content can often slip. Looking to gain more clients? Content is king! Here’s why…
No doubt you already know that a website is one of the best ways to generate leads. Yet, lots of the physical therapists we talk to—who’ve written their own website copy – don’t get the results they expect. They follow the blueprints with video content and downloadable guides.
Even after investing in pay per click (PPC) advertising on Facebook and Google, business is slow with no noticeable uplift in calls, inquiries or treatment sessions. They’re left wondering where they went wrong.
Does that sound like you?
If it does, don’t worry. There is an easy(ish—if you know what you’re doing) fix. Better, more targeted, audience-led copy improves performance and converts website visits into paying clients.
Why Just Having a Website Isn’t Enough (to Build Your Dream Business)
In the 1989 fantasy fiction movie Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner’s character, Ray Kinsella, hears a voice say, “If you build it, he will come“. This mysterious voice from inside the cornfield (which turned out to be his own) encouraged Ray to continue moving forward and pursue his dreams of getting “Shoeless Joe” to play baseball again, even in the face of financial ruin.
Ever since this movie, people in the business world use a misquoted version of this line to suggest that if you plow enough money into building, opening or creating something — “they will come”.
We disagree.
In the age of the internet, you’re on the super-highway to nowhere if you throw up a self-built website with vanilla, one-size-fits-all copy and expect them to come. They won’t.
It might be true for high street stores and passing trade. But online-focused research confirms that if potential customers don’t like what they see or read on your site within the first few seconds, they’re gone. Probably, over the (online) street getting schmoozed by one of your competitors.
So more precisely, they may come—through a combination of luck and expensive advertising—but they’ll just as quickly spin on their heels and head for the door if you don’t hook them in with your copy.
How Many Potential Clients Are You Losing?
According to studies, it takes 0.05 seconds for website visitors to analyze you (and decide whether you’re the right physical therapist for them). If they like what they see, they read, and you can nurture them to booking an appointment. If not, they navigate away in less than 50 milliseconds to seek an alternative in the form of one of your competitors.
So, along with a well-designed website, it pays to have well-written copy that engages and grabs their attention.
Why Good Physical Therapists Make Bad Copywriters
We get it.
You know your subject.
It makes sense to write your website copy, doesn’t it?
Ernest Hemingway famously said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit at a typewriter and bleed.”
This advice is accurate if you’re writing your autobiography or a fiction novel, when you have 500+ pages to set the scene slowly, introduce the characters and build a story. It’s also true if you have time to kill and no patients to see. Right?
However, commercial copywriting and online content should position you as someone who knows what you’re talking about with physical therapy (the authoritative and share-worthy stuff the Google algorithm loves), or content that helps readers make an informed decision about you and your business in milliseconds is different, which is why it requires more than just bleeding on the page. Instead, it requires specific skills and expertise to nurture leads from the homepage through to booking using words.
Step aside, Ernest Hemingway! Perfect prose is lovely but secondary to the art of persuasion if you want to get results.
“You’re one of many physical therapists in my town. Why should I pick you?”
So, how can you write copy that decodes the jargon but still celebrates your clinical ability and convinces visitors you’re the ideal physical therapist for them? Well, we’ll get on to some tips on how you can write better copy. And better copy generates more revenue! But, perhaps unsurprisingly, the best way to stop potential clients clicking away is to hire a professional copywriter.
It would be weird for a patient to walk into your office and tell you a copywriter diagnosed them with plantar fasciitis, right? Of course, it would. You’ve dedicated years to study and worked hard to perfect your craft to diagnose and treat complex injuries and chronic pain quickly and effectively. So, why would you write your website copy (especially when your time could be better spent thinking strategically about how to grow your business)?
The problem with writing your own copy is you know your subject too well. You’re a walking talking Wikipedia of anatomy and physiology, nerve pathways and pain referral patterns. Naming all 206 bones in the human body is as easy as the ABC for you. However, showing this level of clinical knowledge and expertise can backfire and make your website overly complicated for users.
A 10,000-word thesis on low back pain is not what’s needed here. In most cases, all your website visitors want to know (and want to know quickly) is, “Can you fix the pain in my foot so I can start running again? And are you the person I want to spend 45 minutes a week with for the next ten weeks?”
How To Write Copy That Converts into Customers
We offer a professional copywriting service as part of our “done for you” website system. But if that’s not on the table for you we recommend you follow this 5-step plan to improve the copy on your website:
Step 1: Get to know your audience: who are you talking to?
This process is arguably the most crucial step and has absolutely nothing to do with writing. Like Tolstoy, Tolkien or Twain, you could write beautifully flowing words for your website, but if they don’t hit the right note with your perfect patients, then your aspirational business goals remain out of reach.
So, before you write anything, spend some time clarifying the audience you want to target. To do this, get specific and visualize your perfect patient. The most lucrative ones. The ones you enjoyed working with and could help the most, and the ones most likely to recommend you to your friends and family. Then type up (or scribble on a pad) your answers to the following questions:
- Who are they? Are they male, female or both? How old are they?
- What are their hobbies? Goals? Aspirations?
- What’s their income?
- What brands do they like? What blogs do they read?
- What are their “Pain Points”? (The reasons they’re most likely to be seeking a physical therapist. Are they young runners with Achilles’ injuries or older patients with wear and tear problems or chronic pain?)
The more specific you are at this stage, the better. Get it all down; you could even give them a name and use a stock photograph to represent them. Check out the websites and blogs of the brands they like to see what style of writing they use and reflect some of that in your content. Then, once you’ve got this—you can put yourself in the mind of this patient every time you write a new page or produce a piece of content to target their specific pain points.
Step 2: Create an authentic tone of voice: people buy from people
Your tone of voice should reflect your authentic self and your personality, along with the target audience you decided on in Step 1. Are you talking to athletes? Pregnant women? Active grandparents? Under 45’s? Over 45’s? Each of these groups requires a slightly different style and tone of voice to engage and persuade them you’re the perfect physical therapist for them.
Step 3: Target Keywords: what are you perfect patients searching for?
Keywords are less important than they once were from a search engine optimization perspective. Whatever you do, don’t “stuff” your content full of keywords to where it ruins the flow and makes it unreadable. The search engines will penalize you and rank you down. It’s not worth it. However, it’s still essential to include them in your content, so Google and other search engines can display your content to people searching for a physical therapist.
So, again, think target audience and create a list of keywords and phrases that your perfect patients will likely search. There are apps and online tools you can use for this, try Moz.com, Sem Rush, or Google’s Keyword Planner.
Step 4: Write the better copy and generate more business!
If you follow the first three steps, the rest is easy. But here are some tips to remember when you’re writing your copy:
Simplify technical expertise and jargon – Don’t say phalanges when you can say fingers.
Talk about the benefits of your service, not the features – Tell readers what’s in it for them; More “YOU”, less WE.
Keep it simple – In commercial copywriting, comprehension and colloquialism wins every time; Now is not the time to try to win any vocabulary competitions with words like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and such. Save it for your autobiography.
Be authentic – People buy from people. Use the read-aloud function in Word or Google docs. How does it sound? Does it sound like you? If not, scrap it and start again. Remember – better copy generates more business!
Better Copy Generates More Business!
In summary, we’d sum up the secret to high converting website copy as two things; 1—Know your audience and 2—Be authentic.
Knowing your audience allows you to focus on the pain points most relevant to the perfect patients you want to see in your clinic and to write in a style/tone that is most likely to appeal to them. As for being authentic, well, don’t be afraid to put a bit of your personality into your writing, it’s much more engaging and differentiates you from the competition.
Nobody wants a soulless robot as a physical therapist, do they?
Want to talk shop about the importance of Copywriting, or seeking further help to market your business? Reach out to us. We’re always happy to help. You can get in touch with us using our contact page!
Francesca Roll
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