E831 | Why Most Clinicians Fail at Marketing (And How to Make It Easy)
Jul 15, 2025
The #1 Marketing Mistake Clinicians Make (And How to Fix It)
Ever feel like you’re posting content, running ads, sending emails—and still no one is really paying attention? You’re not alone. Most cash-based clinicians struggle with marketing, but not for the reason you think.
In this episode of The PT Entrepreneur Podcast, Doc Danny explains the #1 mistake he sees over and over again—and it’s not about your ad strategy, platform choice, or how many times you post. It’s about your message.
If your message isn’t clear, none of that other stuff matters.
The Real Reason Your Marketing Isn’t Working
You can hire the best agency in the world. You can run Meta ads, post Reels, create funnels, and send emails. But if you aren’t clear on who you help and why you’re the best person to help them—you’re shouting into the void.
It all comes down to knowing your avatar—the specific person you’re trying to attract.
And no, we’re not talking about the blue alien kind. Your avatar is the detailed, specific version of your ideal client. Not “active adults,” but Greg—the 50-year-old attorney with two daughters, who does triathlons and wants to keep up with his kids without blowing out his knee.
If you don’t know your Greg, your content will always fall flat.
Why Clarity of Message Matters More Than Views
We live in a world where controversial posts, trending dances, and polarizing opinions get the most attention. But attention ≠ sales.
You don’t need the most people watching your videos. You need the right people watching.
Great marketing starts when you talk directly to the person who is already looking for a solution—and you show them you understand their world better than anyone else.
What Happens When You Nail Your Message
When you know your avatar in detail:
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You create content that feels like a conversation
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You write emails that feel personal
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You become the obvious solution to their problem
And when people feel like you truly get them? They care less about price. They care more about you being the one who can help.
Here’s How to Start
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Get Specific
Give your avatar a name. A job. A lifestyle. Hobbies. Pain points. What are they scared of? What do they value? -
Speak to Them Only
Make every post, email, and conversation about solving their problem—not everyone’s. -
Be the Specialist
Generalists are white noise in today’s healthcare market. Specialists stand out—and get paid more. -
Tell the Truth
Talk from real experience. If you’re helping a version of your past self, it’ll come through in every word.
Quick Litmus Test
If you’re not sure your message is dialed in, ask yourself:
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Can I describe my ideal client in 30 seconds or less?
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Do my marketing materials speak to one type of person—or everyone?
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Does my website make it crystal clear who I help and how?
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Could someone in my community explain what I do better than “he’s a PT”?
If not, it’s time to get focused.
Final Thought
Marketing isn’t about being everywhere. It’s about being clear, consistent, and specific enough that the right people see themselves in your message—and reach out because of it.
If you’re ready to stop winging it and start growing with a message that actually converts, we can help.
Head to physicaltherapybiz.com and grab a free resource, book a call, or dive into the 5-day challenge.
We’ve helped over 1,000 clinicians start, grow, and scale practices that serve their life—not consume it. You don’t have to figure this out alone.
Like the show? Leave us a 5-star review and tell a friend to listen in.
Want help navigating these phases?
Visit physicaltherapybiz.com or book a free strategy call to talk through your goals with someone who’s helped over 1,000 practices do the same.
Do you enjoy the podcast? If so, leave us a 5-star review on iTunes and tell a friend to do the same!
Ready to elevate your practice? Book a call at the link below with one of our expert consultants today and start your journey to delivering unparalleled physical therapy.
Podcast Transcript
[00:00:00] So if your marketing feels like you are yelling out and to avoid and nobody is listening, we're gonna help you with that today. And we're gonna talk about the number one mistake I see with clinicians when it comes to their marketing.
I'm Dave Matta, I'm the founder of PT Biz. And over the last. 10 years I've started a clinic. I've grown that clinic, I've sold that clinic, and I've helped over a thousand clinicians start, grow, and even sell their clinics as well. Now when we look at marketing, marketing is how we get people in the door, right?
So we say like marketing gets 'em in the door, sales gets 'em, pull their credit card out, and today we're gonna talk about. The number one mistake I see with marketing when it comes to what clinicians are doing, and this isn't necessarily going to be, hey, this is this one platform tactic that you can do.
This is more general than that. This is actually something that if you don't get this right, it doesn't really matter what platform you use or what tactic you implement or what, uh, company you hired or run your ads. Like it doesn't matter if you don't get this one thing down. And what that [00:01:00] is, is your.
Clarity of message in regards to what it is you do and who you help in particular. So we talk about this as understanding your avatar in marketing. So your avatar is not the blue people on, you know, whatever the planet is, uh, in the Avatar movies, which is awesome by the way. But this is different than that.
This is the representation of who it is that you work with. And, and being able to, um, like clarify that very well being, being able to articulate who it is you work with and who you help at a very detailed level. Now, if you don't understand your avatar, how are you gonna understand? What you're trying to educate them on, where you're gonna find them, what type of emails you should send out, what type of social media content you should be producing, um, all of the different marketing channels that you're gonna need to know.
You have to start with this first. And if you don't start with this, and I didn't start with this in my clinic. It feels like you're just throwing stuff out there and you're seeing [00:02:00] what sticks. And even if you do see something that gains a little bit of traction, you don't really know why. You know, you're just like, oh, okay, I gotta do more of that.
And this is where we see people go down this rabbit hole of marketing where they're essentially marketing to, uh, the, the response they get on social media platforms, which can be grossly, uh, skewed by the way. And, and I'll give you a good reason. If I put a piece of content out like this about.
Understanding your marketing avatar and clarity around your marketing message. For cash-based clinicians, I am not gonna get as many views as if I say something, you know, really contentious about, uh, a political topic or the insurance company, uh, you know, a business model as a whole, or if I just dance around like a fool, then I'll get more views.
But those views and that reach doesn't necessarily mean that I'm reaching the right people. So I don't really care about. Views and reach and all of that. I care about [00:03:00] the message, what I'm, what I'm sharing, because it's very specific to the right person that I know I can help. So for you, you have to think about the same thing.
And in order to do that, you really have to get clear on who you help, who, who they are, and, and in a, in a very detailed way where they, uh, hang out, you know what their interests are, and then you can start speaking to them about. What problems you see that you can directly address or what things that they're interested in that you can help them with or educate them on, or be a, uh, you know, an advocate for the, the things that, that they're concerned with.
This is where your messaging starts to become very clear about. Who you work with, and I'll give you a really good example. When, when I was running Athlete's Potential, we went through an exercise with our staff where we actually built out our marketing a a, uh, avatar. So this is actually naming somebody [00:04:00] and creating this avatar of this person in detail.
So when we went through this, we created an avatar for marketing. His, and his name was Greg. So Greg was a 50-year-old attorney. He had two daughters, you know, he was an ex-athlete, still very active, working out, running, you know, doing recreational races like, uh, half marathons and, and, uh, you know, 70.3 triathlons.
He coached his kids' basketball team, you know, was heavily involved in youth athletics with his kids, and Greg gets together with his friends every year and every single year he sees his friends becoming more and more unhealthy and he doesn't want to be like them. Now you can go in even more detail in terms of where he hangs out, what sort of hobbies he, he has, what types of information he's consuming, what websites he's on, what social media platforms.
You can go very, very in depth in this, but just understanding that [00:05:00] for me, when I write an email, uh, for the clinic, I'm writing that email. To Greg. I'm writing that email as if I'm emailing him directly. When I put a piece of social media content together, I am talking into that, you know, video. I, I'm explaining something in that video as if I'm explaining it to Greg.
The, the copy, the verbiage that I'm using in the post. I am writing that out as if I'm describing that to Greg. When I talk to people in the community about who I crush it with, I explain basically what Greg is without saying. Send me Greg. You know, I say, oh, this is the group that we do really well with.
The thing with Greg that's also really interesting is. Greg values time over money. Time is very important to him. Incredibly, uh, important busy person. They want expertise, they want to be treated, you know, uh, in, in an individualized way. They do not want to go traditional clinic where they're getting lumped in there with [00:06:00] a bunch of people that are going through all different types of rehab and they're working with people that are not really specialized in working with this type of, uh, of an adult athlete.
And he really, really values the expertise of a clinic like ours. So for us, this was paramount. So important to be able to dial in our marketing and everything we're gonna do because you'll hear, everyone will say, well, if you don't have a newsletter. Your, you know, your clinic is gonna, is not gonna do well.
Well, if you don't run, uh, med ads, your clinic isn't gonna do well. If you don't run Google ads, your clinic isn't gonna do well. If you don't have a website that has this type of video on it, it's not gonna do well. You know, if you don't go do workshops, your clinic's not gonna do well. All these things.
They could be true, but they're not true unless you dial in in your messaging, you dial in who it is that you work with and why they would wanna work with you. And it's because you have to, you have to deeply understand the person that you are trying to help. And even if you look at this from another [00:07:00] lens, let's say you're looking at this from, from PT biz, right?
It should be quite obvious to you that I understand how to start a clinic, how to grow a clinic, the. The pain points associated with that, how to deal with that, how to systemize a clinic, how to get a clinic to a point where it's sellable, or remove yourself in an autopilot clinic and to try and be able to do all that without burning down all the people and important relationships and your health around you at the same time, which is a very hard thing to do Now, why can I?
Why can I talk about that in great detail? It's because I've done that, I've done the exact same thing. So when I, when I'm putting a marketing message together, whenever I'm writing an email, I'm basically talking to a future version of, or a past version of myself. I wish that I could have helped get through all this shit without learning everything the hard way.
So when I have a chance to, you know, write a marketing message or to do a piece of content, it's very easy for me to think through those things. 'cause all I'm trying to do is [00:08:00] help. Pass Danny be able to deal with the stuff that I had to learn the hard way, and hopefully you don't have to learn it the hard way.
This is clarifying a marketing message. And if you are not clear on who you're speaking to on who you're writing that blog post for on who you're trying to go out and find in the community, then you are going to spread yourself very thin. You're gonna become a generalist and a generalist as white noise in today's healthcare economy.
If you wanna be a generalist. Your best bet is to try to build a massive in-network clinic, uh, in, in whatever capacity you can. Because that is a generalist approach. Uh, you, you're gonna try to, you know, get as many people in the door. It doesn't matter who they were, who they are, or what they're looking for, or what specialization, uh, you may or may not have.
You're just take anybody that's very hard to do in a cash-based or hybrid world. You're much better off focusing on a specific type of person. And clarifying that message in, in a way that is, it's so clear to them that you understand their pain points, [00:09:00] that you're the expert that can help them. This is something they talk about in marketing, where if you can articulate the pain points that somebody's feeling right now.
You instantly become a likely solution to that problem. Like when I, when I talk to people about, you know, the, the, the feeling of uncertainty. Like, let's say you're, let's say you're, you've run a clinic and now you've grown into a standalone space and you are scared outta your mind. Because you've now taken on a five year lease for thousands of dollars a month.
You have equipment loans, maybe you have an expansion loan. You're hiring people. You've never really hired people before. You don't know what to do. You don't know if you're a good leader or not. You think you might be, but you're not sure how to give people feedback. You're not sure how to, uh, tell if.
They're doing the right thing or wrong thing. You've, you've never fired somebody in your own business before. You're scared to do so because you know that they're dependent on your business for buying groceries and paying their mortgage. But if somebody's underperforming, you know, you gotta do something about it because it's hurting your business and you're [00:10:00] not sure if you're doing the right thing.
When I say that and you're listening to this, I probably seem like the solution to your problem because I understand what you're fucking going through. I get it. Like that's, that's as simple as it. That's marketing. But you can't make this shit up. You can't make it up. AI will not tell you that shit. You can't read that in a book and feel that and understand that.
And if you can talk to that level about your patient, that's a tennis player that you love working with. And you can talk about tennis elbow and, you know, the, the, the ab ability to maintain their community with their tennis team and be around them and enjoy all of the, the elements of, uh, the social side of that.
If you can speak to that in great detail, if you can speak to the nuances of the sport and what people are looking for, you're gonna have a. Ton of tennis players are gonna wanna work with you. And that's what I'm talking about when I'm, when I'm trying to get to the point of why your message, your clarity and understanding your avatar is so important because all people want to know is what's the vehicle I.
Tell me the magical ad I need to run. What's the [00:11:00] funnel? What's the whatever sub, anything you want in there for what the marketing is. It doesn't matter unless you have your avatar and your message dialed in. And that is something that's really hard to do because you have to think through who is this person in great detail, and you have to be able to remember that and be able to tell people in your community about that in a succinct way.
In a very, very detailed way and understand their problems so that they realize that you really understand them and you instantly become the solution to their problem, and they're far less price sensitive. Think of it this way, if you're a generalist and you work on all kinds of cars and you're a mechanic, you're gonna be able to charge.
X amount of money, whatever that is. If you are a specialist and you only work with Porsches or whatever, or you know, import vehicles, you're gonna be able to charge way more because there's very few of you and they know that you're gonna do the, the, the work correctly and they can trust their car with you or whatever, right?
Like, like the same thing goes in medicine. You're a general family practice doctor or you're a heart surgeon. Which one do you think makes more [00:12:00] money? The heart surgeon, obviously, right? Because they're more specialized. And if you're more specialized and you have a niche in which you can truly help people, and you can get out and you can represent that in the community, and you can do that in social media, and you can do that on your website, and you can do that in your newsletters and everything else that goes into this.
You're gonna be just fine. But step number one. It is dialing in your marketing message, dialing in your avatar, and if you need help getting your business squared away to where this is something that is a key element of your business. You're doing it correctly. You're, you're getting your brand out there correctly.
You're actually driving the right people in the door. Then you have to work on sales problems and hiring problems and finance problems, and these are all good problems to have. 'cause you're growing. We can help you with all this. You don't have to figure it out by yourself. I've been there. We've helped a thousand clinicians start, grow, and scale their businesses over the last eight years.
This isn't a thousand people that read a blog post. This is a thousand people that I've shook their hand, I've met them face to face, and we have helped them along the journey of starting and growing a business as a [00:13:00] clinician, which is a hard thing to do 'cause we did not learn this in school. So if that sounds like something you want help with, head to physical therapy biz.com.
Take a look at what we have going on. Read about some of the people we've worked with, get some of our free resources. We have a fantastic five day challenge. You can even get the book that I wrote there, and it's like 4 99 or something like that with a ton of awesome training that go with it, like. Dip your toe in the water and see if we're worth it.
Uh, and, and head the website and check that out. But if this is what you're here for and you like the podcast, you like the YouTube video, cool. We'll keep showing up for you every single week we've been doing it. Now, this is, I think the 829th or 830th podcast that I've done. We're not stopping anytime soon because we're here to help the profession and that's not going anywhere.
So as always, thanks so much for listening and watching, and we'll catch you the next one.