Evidence-Based Practice Deserves Evidence-Based Marketing

by Mark Reid

It’s been two years since I took a leap of faith and decided on a career change from physiotherapy to healthcare marketing. Before that career move all I’ve really known is clinical life. I’ve been a physiotherapist for 12 years, starting in the NHS but then working across all sectors and eventually co-founding and running my own private practice. Clinical practice is still what I know best as it’s the thing I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to master and when moving into marketing I’ve tried to stay true to my clinical roots and continued to do what I always strived to do - evidence-based practice.

Marketing doesn’t have a PubMed. It doesn’t have thousands of RCTs and systematic reviews for different marketing strategies to show us what works best. None of the latest social media marketing gurus have had their data peer reviewed. So how is it possible to be ‘evidence-based’ in the world of digital marketing?

I actually think it’s far easier than most people assume. ‘Evidence-based practice’ doesn’t exist only because PubMed exists, it describes a method and an approach to clinical care that goes far beyond that. And it is that same approach that clinicians apply with their patients every day that I would love them to start to apply to their clinic marketing. The two don’t need to be so different.

It all starts with an assessment

You wouldn’t dream of initiating a treatment plan without first completing an assessment. It’s the assessment that helps you to understand what the diagnosis is, what factors have contributed to it and also the patient’s specific circumstances. Not every patient has the same needs, the same motivations, the same goals, the same background knowledge, baseline fitness, or access to the same equipment. There isn’t one single solution that works for everyone, and understanding how to personalise the right solution to the right problem is exactly what makes for an elite clinician.