Most physio clinics are already doing marketing. There’s a website, an Instagram account, maybe some Google Ads running. What a lot of clinic owners can’t tell me is which of those things brought in last week’s new patients.
That’s a fixable problem. This is how I’d rank the channels for an Australian physio clinic, what to do in what order, and the mistakes that cost the most.
The number that should change how you spend your marketing hours
There are 9,963 physiotherapy businesses operating in Australia in 2026. That’s up 4.9% on last year, and the count has grown by an average of 5.5% a year since 2021. The industry is worth about $3.9 billion.
Growth sounds like good news, and for the profession it is. For your clinic it means the local search result you appear in is getting more crowded every year. The same three-pack of Google listings, more clinics trying to sit in it.
If you do nothing, your position in that result gets worse each year by default. Not because you got worse, but because more clinics turned up.
Why physio marketing works differently to the rest of allied health
Physiotherapists in Australia are first-contact practitioners. A patient can book with you directly. They don’t need a GP to send them.
That one fact changes where your marketing effort should go. A podiatrist or a dietitian leans harder on referral relationships because more of their funded work arrives that way. You can be found and booked by someone who has never spoken to a doctor about the problem.
The exception is funding. If a patient wants Medicare to cover part of it, they need a GP to write a Chronic Disease Management plan, which allows up to five subsidised allied health services per calendar year. Private health extras need no referral at all, and most patients claim on the spot.
So you have two quite different audiences. One is searching for you right now with a sore back. The other is sitting in a GP’s office being told to see someone. Both matter. Only one of them is winnable with a website.
Signs your clinic has gone quiet
- New patient numbers are flat but your existing patients are happy
- You can’t name the source of your last five new bookings
- Your Google reviews have a gap of more than a couple of months
- You rank below clinics you know are smaller than you
- Your website hasn’t changed since it was built
- Your busiest referrer retired or moved and nothing replaced them
None of those are emergencies on their own. Three or more at once usually means the clinic is running on momentum from work done years ago.
The five channels that matter, ranked
1. Google Business Profile and reviews
This is the one to fix first, and it’s the one most clinics underrate because it isn’t creative work.
When someone searches “physio near me” or “physio Collingwood”, Google shows a map with three listings above everything else. Getting into that three-pack is worth more to a suburban clinic than any other single thing on this list. It’s free to claim, and the levers are unglamorous: complete every field, pick the right primary category, add real photos of your actual rooms, post updates, and answer questions.
Reviews are the part that compounds. American survey data puts the share of patients who read reviews before choosing a provider at around 84%, with about half reading six or more. I haven’t found an Australian equivalent with the same rigour, so treat those figures as directional rather than local. The behaviour is familiar enough that the direction is safe to act on.
One caveat that applies to you and not to most businesses. Physiotherapy is regulated by AHPRA, and the National Law prohibits using testimonials about clinical care in advertising. You are allowed to ask patients for a Google review: AHPRA has confirmed that, and because Google will not let you switch reviews off, your Google listing is not treated as advertising you control. What you must not do is lift those reviews onto your own website if they talk about treatment, diagnosis or clinical results, and you must never edit a review to remove the clinical bit, because an edited review is treated as misleading. A Sydney physiotherapy practice has already been penalised for displaying Google reviews on its own site. Feedback about the non-clinical experience, booking, communication, how the front desk handled things, is fine to use. Ask freely, display carefully.
What matters as much as the star rating is recency. A clinic with 40 reviews where the newest is eight months old looks worse than a clinic with 22 where the newest is from Tuesday. Build the ask into discharge. Most patients will do it if you ask once, clearly, at the right moment.
2. Your website and local search
Your site has two jobs. Rank for the searches that describe what you treat, and convince the person who lands there to book.
Most physio websites fail the first job because they’re built around the clinic rather than the problem. A page called “Our Services” with a list of treatment types will not rank for “shoulder pain physio Melbourne”. A page about shoulder pain might.
The second job is usually easier to fix. Put online booking above the fold. Show your fees, or at least explain how the funding works, because the patient wondering whether they can afford you is the one who closes the tab. Name the physios and show their faces. Someone with a sports injury wants to know the person treating them has seen that injury before.
3. GP and allied health referral relationships
This is the oldest channel and it still works, but it’s slower than clinic owners expect and it doesn’t scale the way the first two do.
The version that works is specific. Pick the practices within a reasonable radius, find the GPs who see a lot of musculoskeletal presentations, and give them a reason to remember you: a clear note back after each shared patient, a named contact, an easy way to refer. The version that doesn’t work is dropping off a stack of brochures and hoping.
Worth saying plainly: if you are relying on one or two referrers for a big share of your new patients, that’s a risk, not a strategy. People retire.
4. Google Ads
Ads buy you the top of the search result while you earn the organic version. For a new clinic or a new location they’re often the fastest thing available.
Keep the targeting tight. Bid on treatment and location terms where the person is ready to book, not broad terms like “physiotherapy”. Set a radius that matches how far someone will actually drive with a sore neck, which is less far than you think. Send the click to a page about that problem, not your homepage.
The honest caveat is that ads stop the day you stop paying. They’re a tap, not an asset. Run them while the slower work builds, and keep checking the cost per booked appointment rather than the cost per click.
5. Instagram and Facebook
Last, and I’d argue for last.
Social works well for a physio clinic as a trust and retention channel. Exercise demonstrations, staff introductions, behind the scenes, community sponsorship. It reassures people who already know you and it keeps you in front of past patients who might come back.
What it rarely does is reach the person with acute pain deciding where to go this afternoon. That person is on Google. If your marketing hours are limited and your reviews are stale, posting three times a week to an audience of existing patients is the wrong use of the time.
That’s not an argument for deleting the account. It’s an argument about order.
The 12 month plan
Months 1 to 2. Claim and complete the Google Business Profile properly. Fix the primary category. Add photos. Set up a review request that happens at discharge without anyone having to remember. Get online booking working and visible.
Months 3 to 5. Write the pages for what you actually treat. One page per problem, written for the patient rather than the practitioner. Fix the fees and funding explanation. Add the team.
Months 4 to 6. Start the referral work in parallel. Name the practices, make the introductions, set up the correspondence habit.
Months 6 to 9. Turn on Google Ads if new patient numbers still need help, pointed at the pages you built in months 3 to 5.
Months 9 to 12. Review what actually produced bookings. Cut what didn’t. This is the step almost everyone skips.
The three mistakes I see most
Treating social media as the main channel. Covered above. It’s a retention tool at a clinic your size, not an acquisition one.
Not tracking where bookings come from. If your front desk software has a “how did you hear about us” field and nobody fills it in, you’re making budget decisions blind. Ask the question, record the answer, look at it quarterly.
Rebuilding the website before fixing the listing. A new website is the expensive, visible, satisfying project. The Google Business Profile is free and usually moves more. Do the free one first and you’ll have a better idea of what the website actually needs.
Where Phoenix Marketing fits
We work with clinics on exactly this order of operations: listing and reviews first, then the site and local search, then ads once there’s something worth sending traffic to. If you’d rather hand it over than run it yourself, our marketing for physiotherapists page covers how we work and what it costs.
If you’d rather do it yourself, start with our guides on getting more enquiries from your Google Business Profile and asking for Google reviews. If you’re weighing up paid channels, we’ve compared Google Ads, Meta and LinkedIn.
Sources
- IBISWorld, Physiotherapy Services in Australia: market size and number of businesses, 2026
- Physiotherapy Board of Australia and Ahpra, on physiotherapists as first-contact practitioners
- Services Australia, Chronic Disease Management plans and allied health item numbers
- rater8, How Patients Choose Their Doctors, 2025 report (United States data)
Frequently asked questions
Google Business Profile work can move within weeks. Website and local search changes usually take two to four months to show up in rankings, and longer in a competitive suburb. Ads are immediate but stop when you stop paying.
It helps, but it shouldn’t be your only plan. Direct bookings are the larger opportunity for most private clinics because there is no gatekeeper. Referrals matter more for the Medicare-funded side.
There’s no threshold that switches something on. What matters is having more than the clinics you compete with locally, and having recent ones. Check the three clinics ranking above you and aim past them.
Only after the listing, the site and the review habit are sorted. Paid social can work for a clinic opening a new location or launching a specific program, but it’s a poor first move for general patient acquisition.
It varies too much by location and stage to give a number that means anything. The more useful question is cost per new patient, and whether you can currently calculate it.
Run a different kind of practice? The same ranked approach for legal work is in how law firms get more clients.
Get a second opinion on your clinic’s marketing
If you want to know which of these five is actually letting your clinic down, we’ll take a look and tell you. No obligation, and we’ll be straight with you if the answer is that you don’t need us.