The SIMPLEST Social Media Game Plan for Cash PTs

If you’re a cash-based practice owner and social media marketing is stressing you out… this one’s for you.

You’ve probably heard that you “need” to be posting all the time in order to get clients. But let’s be real—when you’re running your practice, treating patients, doing all the admin, and trying to have a life outside of work, adding Instagram or TikTok to your to-do list can feel like a whole extra job.

And if you’re like most of the students I coach in our DPT to CEO program, you're not trying to be an influencer—you just want to get consistent clients without burning out. In this post, I’m breaking down social media for beginners and the simplest ways so it actually works for your business—without feeling like a second full-time gig.

Start Here: Pick ONE Platform

When it comes to digital marketing, especially on social platforms, it can be easy to get bogged down by all of the social media channels out there. Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, among others are all available to you, but that doesn’t mean you need to be creating content on all of them. 

If you’re trying to post on every one platform all at once when you’re still figuring out your marketing: That’s a one-way ticket to burnout.

Instead, if you’re looking for a simple strategy on how to market your business, my best advice is to pick one platform and one platform only to start with. For most of the students I work with, my main recommendation is Instagram. Most of the time, practice owners are already familiar with the platform, it’s relatively easy to use, and their audience is probably already on their too.

Of course, if you happen to love TikTok or Facebook, then go for it. 

Once you have your one platform selected, stick to content creation on that single platform for the next 3 to 6 months. Keep your social media posts simple, enjoyable for you, and build from there once things feel manageable.

Learn why every PT should be doing content marketing at the blog post here.

Use the 3-Post Formula

Now that you have your platform picked, the next step for your content marketing strategy is actually posting. Most of the time, this is where I see practice owners freeze up. They don’t know what to post, where to start, and what their audience would most like to see. To help make things doable, my go-to easy content strategy for PTs when it comes to posting is the following:

1. One educational post

2. One client story or testimonial

3. And one personal post

It might seem too good to be true, but that’s really how simple it can be. To help bring context to each type of post, here’s more of a breakdown:

1. Educational Post

When it comes to providing education on social media, it’s key to think about teaching something your ideal client would care about. Some ideas are:

• “Here’s one way to ease shoulder pain during overhead presses.”

• “Why your pelvic floor might be the missing link in your core training.”

• “3 ways to tell if it’s time to see a PT.”

Providing education like this to your audience helps to build trust with your audience, increasing your brand awareness, while helping to position you as an expert in your field. And as we know, building know, like, and trust (KLT) is one of the first steps to moving a potential client down the sales funnel. 

Learn more about my take on the KLT framework at the blog post here.

It’s also important to recognize that posts like these help to give clients a “quick win” or “solution” to the problems they are facing. This is just another beneficial aspect to sharing education with your audience.

2. Client Story

Client stories and testimonials are a great way to highlight results or the “transformation” you’re providing with your services. 

Tell a story about a client you helped get from problem to solution and what that was like for both you and them. 

One I hang up with this type of post is that new practice owners will tell me “But I haven’t had any real clients.” That’s perfectly okay! At some point you’ve helped a patient, whether it was during your clinic job or in clinicals during graduate school. Don’t overthink this storytelling process, even small wins are big news and potential clients want to hear about them. This helps them to see themselves in the clients you’ve already helped and puts them one step closer to booking with you.

3. Personal Share

As challenging as it can be for us to talk about ourselves, it’s actually quite important when attempting to build relationships with your audience. Your audience wants to know more about you:

• Why did you start your business? 

• What’s your mission? 

• What’s your background? 

• Are you a CrossFitter or runner? 

• What motivates you?

Potential clients want to work with someone they connect with. Sharing personal stories and information helps to make you seem “more human” just like your audience sitting on the other end of the post.

BONUS: Don’t Forget CTAs

A little bonus tip for practice owners is creating content that is centered around call to action (CTA). So many times, I see practice owners creating awesome content that really speaks to their audience but they forget one thing - the fact that they are actually accepting clients. 

Not only is it important for your audience to know you exist, which is step one with creating content, they also have to be informed that they can work with you (insert CTAs). If  potential customers don’t know how to get started in working with you, they just won’t. 

Making sure to put simple CTAs at the end of your content posts, either on the content itself or in the caption, will help you to spread this awareness. You can also go as far as creating strictly CTA posts such as:

• A still graphic that says “Book a Call to Get Started”

• A short video of you in your office space with on screen text that says “Call me today!”

• Or an Instagram story that tells your audience you have “3 spots left for the week”

There’s obviously many other ways that you can share CTAs and tell people how to work with you, but this is a good way to get started. From here, rotate these 3-4 post topics throughout the week and watch as driving traffic to your business grows.

Batch and Schedule Your Content

When it comes to when and how you plan to create your content, a pro tip that I can offer you is the importance of batching and scheduling your content. If you’re trying to create posts on the fly with no plan involved, social media management is going to feel hard. 

One of the best things I’ve ever done for my social media marketing, as well as what I encourage our students to do is batching content ahead of time. A couple ways to help make batching your content successful is to

• Choose a day of the week to devote to social media content creation (let’s say Wednesday).

• Using the formula above, plan your 3 or 4 posts for the upcoming week or weeks.

• Create your video or still graphic creative all at once.

• Write each caption for each post your plan to post.

• Lastly, use a free marketing tool, like Meta Business Suite to schedule your content out.

Now instead of coming up with content on the fly, you’ve taken the time to plan out and schedule your content, putting you ahead of schedule. Once you get in the habit of doing this, this should only take you a couple hours to complete every week, depending on how far in advance you plan to schedule out content of course. Your future self will thank you.

Want help with content planning? Check out the blog post here for 3 months of content planning in 30 minutes.

Start Small, Stay Consistent

One of my favorite mottos is “imperfect action trumps perfect inaction.” Basically what this means in the context of social media is:

• You don’t need to be posting 7 days a week

• You don’t need to be glued to your phone every day

• You don’t need to have the perfect graphics or video content

• You don’t even need to be super confident on camera

What matters most is that you get started and stay consistent. It’s just like building a muscle or creating any other type of habit: start small and keep at it. Soon enough you will see your efforts pay off. 

And to close, just to review the simple but effective social media plan for cash based PTs, here’s a list of actions steps to help you get started this week:

• Pick ONE platform (I recommend Instagram).

• Plan three posts using the 3-post formula.

• Write and schedule them in advance.

• Don’t forget to include call to actions in your captions or creative (or create CTA posts of their own).

• Start small and keep at it.

But if you’re still thinking, “Okay, Morgan, I love the plan but I still don’t have time,” I got you.

This is exactly the kind of stuff we help with inside the DPT to CEO coaching program. If you want more structure, accountability, and support to grow your business (and actually enjoy doing it), we’d love to help. Learn more about our coaching program at the link here or if you’re ready to get started, book a free consultation with one of our team members today.

Listen to this episode on my podcast!