If you’re running a cash-based physical therapy, chiropractic, or functional medicine practice, you’ve probably thought about hiring an agency or freelancer to run your marketing. But here’s the hard truth: outsourcing your marketing can often be a massive mistake. Today, we’re diving into why learning paid ads and bringing your marketing in-house is the smartest decision you can make as a practice owner.
In this episode, we’ll explain why most agencies fall short, why paid ads are simpler than they seem, and how taking full control of your marketing will give you more leverage and higher returns. Let’s break it down.
Why Paid Ads Are the Smart Move for Cash Practice Owners
Paid advertising is often seen as a daunting task, especially for physical therapists and other healthcare professionals who didn’t sign up to become marketing experts. But here’s the thing: learning paid ads isn’t as difficult as the marketing industry makes it seem. It’s a skill you can easily develop, and once you do, it gives you total control over your marketing strategy.
Hiring an agency or freelancer might seem like the easy route, but it often leads to disappointment. Agencies don’t have the intimate knowledge of your practice that you do, and that lack of understanding can hinder the effectiveness of your marketing.
When you learn paid ads yourself, you gain a comprehensive understanding of what works, what doesn’t, and how to adjust strategies for maximum impact. Once you’ve got the basics down, delegating becomes much easier. You can hire someone to manage your system rather than teach them how to create one.
The Obstacle is the Way: Why You Should Embrace the Challenge
Too many practice owners get stuck because they’re unwilling to tackle the challenge of learning marketing. They cycle through agencies, spend tons of money, and still end up no better off than before.
The truth is, if you want to scale your practice, you need to confront this obstacle head-on. By doing so, you’ll develop the skills to grow your practice in ways that agencies simply can’t offer. Once you understand how paid ads work, you’ll not only become a better business owner, but you’ll also be able to adapt your marketing strategy to align with the other core functions of your practice.
Lead Acquisition: Not Just About Getting More Leads
When most people think about marketing, they focus primarily on lead acquisition—getting more leads into their pipeline. However, lead acquisition is only one piece of the puzzle. If you want your paid ads to be successful, you need to make sure the rest of your systems (like lead nurturing, conversion, and retention) are aligned with your marketing strategy.
Key Insight: Lead acquisition is essential, but it’s not enough on its own. Without aligning your entire patient experience, marketing will fail. You can’t treat marketing as a standalone function; it must work in harmony with your practice’s core systems.
The Real Magic Behind Profitable Paid Ads
Paid ads aren’t inherently difficult, but making them profitable is where most practice owners struggle. The secret isn’t in the ads themselves; it’s in the processes you have in place behind the scenes. Here’s why you need to understand the whole system:
Set the Right Offer: When advertising, the first thing you need is an offer that appeals to the right people—those who are a good fit for your services. Advertising a “free consultation” often attracts low-quality leads, while advertising a full-priced evaluation turns people off because the cost is too high. The best approach is offering a moderate discount or voucher for a specific service (like a $47 or $97 offer). This attracts the right people who are committed to paying for your services without burning out your team or spending too much on ads.
Optimize Lead Nurturing: Once you have the right leads, you need a solid system to nurture them. This includes following up quickly and efficiently, having a clear process in place, and offering incentives that keep them engaged. Many practice owners fail here, thinking that generating leads is the end of the process. But in reality, converting those leads into patients requires consistent follow-up and a smooth onboarding process.
Improving the Patient Experience: Once the lead is in, the next step is ensuring they show up for their appointment. Many practices fail to optimize this stage, but simple tweaks—like confirming appointments, sending personalized messages, and giving patients a warm welcome—can significantly improve show-up rates and increase conversions.
Optimizing Your Conversion Process: If your conversion rates are low, the problem isn’t necessarily with your leads—it’s in your sales process. Review your current approach and adjust it to better align with the expectations and motivations of cold traffic. Ensure that your team is trained to handle objections and set clear expectations.
Why Delegating Marketing Is a Mistake
You might be thinking, “Why can’t I just delegate all of this to an expert?” The truth is, delegation works best when you have a system in place. You can’t delegate what you don’t understand. Once you’ve mastered the fundamentals of paid ads and marketing, delegation becomes easy because you’re handing off a process you know works. Without that foundational knowledge, however, you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment.
The True Value of Learning Paid Ads
As Ben’s experience shows, mastering paid ads doesn’t mean you have to run them forever. It means understanding how they work so you can optimize them effectively. Ben’s practice saw significant improvements by learning how to run Facebook ads and then optimizing his systems around those ads. This wasn’t about changing the ads themselves—it was about refining the patient experience, improving lead nurturing, and training the team to handle objections.
The magic is in aligning your marketing strategy with your practice’s entire system. Once that alignment is achieved, paid ads become a well-oiled machine that powers consistent growth.
Conclusion: Master Paid Ads and Scale Your Practice
The bottom line is that paid ads are not difficult once you understand the system behind them. Learning to run your own ads puts you in a position of control and allows you to scale your practice efficiently. More importantly, it helps you align your marketing with the other critical functions of your practice, leading to higher profits and a more sustainable business model.
If you want to learn how to take your marketing in-house, scale your business, and develop a predictable revenue stream, start by mastering paid ads. With the right systems in place, you’ll be on your way to long-term success.
Watch and Listen to the Full Video
For a deeper dive into a cash physical therapists’ journeys, make sure to listen to the full video: The Real Reason Your Marketing Isn’t Working and How to Fix It Fast.
About Author:
Although the company eventually failed, it provided Jordan with invaluable learning experiences. He became passionate about designing world-class patient experiences and building efficient marketing & sales funnels for cash physical therapists. Utilizing this expertise, Jordan became the CMO of a well-known physical therapy media company, and consulted for and built marketing funnels for some of the top physical therapy business coaches.
Eventually growing tired of the typical agency and consulting grind, Jordan, alongside Max Zirbel, founded Clinical Marketer. They infused it with the hands-on support and mentorship that they benefited from in their initial venture. The company was a success from the start, aiding clinics in scaling to 6 and 7 figures in revenue. During its first launch, Jordan and his team met Dr. Ben Bagge, whom they later partnered with after helping him grow his business from $200K/year to over $1M/year in three years.
