How to Know If Your Marketing Efforts Are Working

When it comes to starting your cash based practice, there’s a million tasks that need to be completed. Not to mention, as the owner, you’re wearing ten different hats when it comes to managing the small business. But although this is true, during my time working with students starting their own cash based PT practices, I’ve noticed one specific hang up they all seem to have in common - marketing.

Not only am I working to nudge them in the direction of putting themselves out there and marketing their practice so that they can gain know, like, and trust with their audience, I’m also asking them questions about how their marketing efforts have been working in the past. For the most part, none of them can answer that question with confidence.

During this post, we’re going to dive into my top tips for how to determine if your marketing efforts are working. Spoiler alert: you need data.

Still on the fence about marketing for your practice, learn why every PT should be doing content marketing in the blog post here.

Why Data Tracking Matters

When you’re first getting started in your cash based physical therapy practice, or even if you’ve been at it for a while, marketing for your practice can feel a little bit like “throwing spaghetti at the wall.” All the while, you’re just hoping something “sticks.”

But this method of “post and pray” leaves you in the dark on understanding which efforts are working, which aren’t, and where to focus your efforts moving forward.

This is where beginner level data tracking can come into play. By gathering and tracking specific data metrics, over time you’ll begin to get a clear picture of what efforts are working and where your clients are coming from. Not to mention, this is one of the driving factors for achieving your marketing goals and benefiting your practice’s growth in the long-term.

If you have no idea where to start with marketing for your practice, check out my blog post here where I dive into digital marketing 101 for the cash based practice.

Three Key Areas to Track

For starters, when it comes to tracking data for your practice, I recommend three main categories:

Marketing Metrics
Sales Metrics
Time Spent

These three areas can help you gain helpful insights into your marketing efforts.

Here’s how to break each one down:

Marketing Metrics: Understanding the Customer Journey

The first area you want to focus on is marketing metrics. These metrics can give you insight into how well you’re putting your practice in front of people and creating awareness about the business and services you offer.

Trust me, it’s tempting to get caught up in what I call “vanity metrics,” like how many followers you have, but in reality those metrics aren’t going to lead to your long-term success. Yes, of course we want people following our page, but it’s more important to focus on the metrics leading to sales conversions versus how many people liked your post.

Here are a few marketing metrics to get you started:

Outbound Connections: How many people did you reach out to this month? This could be follow-ups, direct messages, or emails.
Networking Events: How many events or community meetings did you attend? This could be with potential clients or other healthcare providers.
Social Media Engagement: Look at your reach, content interactions, and DMs sent. It is not just about followers but about actual engagement with the content you’re putting out.
Website Traffic: Check out your website sessions, unique visitors, and top-performing pages. Is your Instagram content actually sending people to your website? How many people make it to your bookings page and how many actually book?

Pro tip: If you’re creating content on social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, etc., a key thing to look out for is patterns. For example, are posts about pelvic health driving more traffic to your consultation page than your other topics? That information lets you know that your audience is resonating with that content and gives you the opportunity to create similar content in the future.

Sales Metrics: Converting Potential Customers to Clients

Once you have a good idea that your audience is seeing your practice, the next step is to start tracking how many of those potential customers are converting into paying clients. Lead generation is critical, yes, but converting leads to clients is what pays the bills. You need to better understand the return on investment (ROI) or your efforts.

Sales metrics in themselves can help show you what’s working and what’s not in your conversion process.

Here’s what to measure:

Inbound Inquiries: How many people contacted you this month? This includes texts, calls, emails, or DMs.
Consultations: How many discovery calls or consultations did you schedule?
Conversion Rates: Look at how many consultations turned into paying clients. If you’re getting lots of consults but not many bookings, it might be time to refine your messaging or sales process.
Referral Sources: Track where each new client came from. Did they find you through Instagram, Google, or word of mouth? This helps you see which marketing channels are pulling their weight.

Pro tip: To take things a step further, I would encourage you to look at what your average income per appointment comes out to. To find this number, take your total monthly income and divide it by the number of sessions you had. This helps you stay on track to hit your financial goals.

Time Spent: Are You Doing the Work?

The last bit of information that is important to track is your time spent - how much time you’re actually spending on marketing and sales. This metric isn’t the most enjoyable to look at, but it’s important for you to know where your time is going.

Here’s the deal: If you’re saying, “I can’t find any clients,” but you’re only spending an hour a week on marketing, that’s probably why. On the flip side, if you’re spending hours creating Instagram reels and still not booking clients, that’s also telling you something - maybe it’s time to reevaluate your sales process or brush up on your sales skills.

Learn more sales skills at the blog post here.

Start tracking:

Marketing Hours: Time spent creating content, networking, or running ads.
Sales Hours: Time spent in consultations or follow-ups.

You can use a tool like Toggl to track this. Clock in and out when you’re working on these tasks, and at the end of the month, you’ll have a clear picture of where your time is going.

How to Get Started

If this process feels overwhelming, don’t worry—I’ve got you. Here’s how to get started:

Create a Simple Spreadsheet:
- Make columns for each of the metrics we talked about—outbound connections, social media reach, consultations, etc. If spreadsheets aren’t your thing, there are tons of templates online (I even have one I can share—let me know if you’re interested!).
Go Back in Time:
- If you’ve been in practice for a while, try to collect data from the past few months. The more info you have, the clearer your trends will be.
Analyze Monthly:
- At the end of each month, take 30 minutes to review your data. Look for patterns and use them to guide your decisions for the next month.
Refine and Adjust:
- This isn’t about perfection—it’s about progress. If you notice something isn’t working, adjust your strategy and try again.

To help you get started, I’ve included a link to my free data tracking template here. Just make a copy of your own and start tracking!

The Bottom Line

Tracking your marketing metrics isn’t just “nice-to-have”—it’s a game changer for understanding the results of your time and effort investments. By looking at real data, you can stop guessing and start making smarter decisions for your practice moving forward.

If you’re struggling to market and grow your cash based practice, we offer one-on-one help in our DPT to CEO business coaching program. Or if you’d like to find out more about if our program would be the right fit for you, book a free discovery call with me here! We can discuss your goals, current state of your practice, and what your next best steps would be.