The challenges of marketing a healthcare profession to the public

One of the main tasks a professional association is asked to undertake by its members is to raise the profile of the profession it represents. The Australian Hospital and Healthcare Bulletin invited Cris Massis, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Physiotherapy Association, to shares the APA’s strategy in this issue’s Allied Health Column.
As is the case with physiotherapy, many healthcare professions have a diverse membership base and a wide a variety of audiences they’re trying to reach. Peak bodies like the Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA) have to think carefully about how to spend their limited marketing resources in a way that benefits the largest number of practitioners and patients.
“One of the difficulties we face is to try to equally represent the entire scope of the physiotherapy profession.”
For the APA, paying for mass marketing using expensive channels like television advertising is not currently feasible. Even if it was, broadcast media may not be the best  strategy given the growth of more targeted and cost-effective channels, especially in the online environment.
Our current strategy focuses on trying to leverage the strengths of the physiotherapy profession.
One of our best assets is that the Australian public generally has a high degree of trust in the physiotherapy profession. By extension, media organisations are willing to feature commentary from the APA and/or our members on many healthcare topics, because physiotherapists are seen as intelligent, reliable, and evidence-based.
Our challenge is to try to encourage articles and stories that highlight the strengths and breadth of the physiotherapy profession. We do this by building relationships with media organisations, creating our own content for media releases and publication, and monitoring and reacting to external media (among other things).
This type of public relations work can be really effective. Businesses selling products and services bend over backwards, pay a lot of money, and still struggle to get into the newspaper, or on TV. Healthcare professions find it easier, although we still have to dedicate resources to generating media.
At the time of writing, the APA had facilitated nearly 150 pieces of media for the physiotherapy profession in 2013. It’s an area we continue to invest in.
Another cost-effective way to generate awareness of physiotherapy is to work with like-minded partners. For example, this year we built a relationship with Steel Blue (a work boot manufacturer) to launch a Tradies National Health Month in August. This provided a great opportunity to highlight the role of physiotherapy in occupational health through a contest, a website, media coverage, and, yes, even television ads. Other organisations we’ve worked with include UN Women Australia, Bicycle Network, Arthritis Victoria, Sports Medicine Australia, Fairfax Events, and more. We have also run a variety of new online projects with good success. We commissioned a short film titled Improve Your Move, which was produced by an award-winning film company called Truce Films. It was viewed nearly 20 000 times on YouTube in its first two months.
We also worked with an advertising agency to run a digital ‘Find A Physio’ campaign. The campaign featured a contest, short videos about physiotherapy, and online advertisements, the aim of which was to keep physiotherapy front-of-mind, and encourage patients to seek appropriate physiotherapy treatment.
One of the difficulties we face is to try to equally represent the entire scope of the physiotherapy profession. This is not an easy task. For example, the APA will soon have 15 clinical groups and networks. It’s not possible to highlight all of these areas in a four-minute YouTube video (we didn’t even try; instead we tried to make an emotional connection with viewers). The public and private sectors also have different needs. As a public-sector cardiorespiratory physiotherapist recently said: ‘We’re not looking for more patients.’
One project we’ve come up with to try and honour the whole profession is a contest called I Love My Physio, which we launched on World Physiotherapy Day (8 September). It encourages patients to tell us why they love their physio. The concept is simple, and it’s been a really successful way to highlight nearly the whole scope of physiotherapy practice using patient stories. Last year, we were also able to generate media about many of the entries, and we’re hoping to do the same this year. At the time of writing, we had over 200 entries to this contest.
An area we’ll be really trying to grow in 2014 is our online offering of information for patients. During the last few years, we’ve developed a pretty healthy social media and on-line presence, but most of that content is aimed at providing information to physiotherapists. With so many patients going online to learn about their health, it’s imperative we give them some of what they’re looking for. It can be tricky to get the balance right. We don’t want patients going online to diagnose and treat themselves; that’s neither safe, nor a good thing for physiotherapists. So, we aim to create content that is engaging and informative, but ultimately that drives people to see their physiotherapist, if appropriate.
The way I look at it, while there are some obvious challenges when trying to market physiotherapy to the public (particularly around trying to encapsulate a really diverse profession in a way that is easily understood), all healthcare professions have this strength in common: people care about healthcare, because they care about their health. The trick is figuring out the best way to get our messages across.
Cris Massis,Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Physiotherapy Association,
The Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA) is the peak body representing the interests of Australian physiotherapists and their patients. The APA is a national organisation with non-autonomous state and territory branches and specialty subgroups.
The APA corporate structure is one of a company limited by guarantee. The organisation has more than 13000 members and over 300 members in volunteer positions on committees or working parties. The APA is governed by a Board of Directors elected by representatives of all stakeholder groups within the Association.
Visit our website www.physiotherapy.asn.au