With the intention of spreading the word about the wonders of physiotherapy, some physiotherapists may fall into the trap of making claims for their roles and services that are not backed by evidence. Overlooking evidence can mislead people into forming incorrect assumptions about the treatment and this may cost them their health.
Evidence Defined
Evidence refers to the body of information or facts that validate the truth of a belief or proposition. Applying this evidence-based clinical practice, evidence can be defined as pieces of data, information, and facts from which a clinical decision is derived.
Why Look for Evidence?
In many cases, physiotherapists look for pieces of evidence to answer specific questions or to keep one’s practice abreast with the latest trends in the field. Each question needs unique types of evidence and this can influence how you shape your questions and research strategy.
There are three approaches to learning the happenings in the industry, including individual EBP, face-to-face networking, and electronic networking. Each has its respective pros and cons.
The Three Phases of Evidence-Based Marketing
To help marketers put more focus on evidence-based marketing, there are three key phases to remember in developing a marketing program. Accurate execution of each phase leads to better marketing decisions that are strongly based on real-world performance.
Below is an explanation of each phase:
1. Optimization – This phase involves identifying the value of the company, its products and offerings, and determining strategies to communicate that value to the target customers in a clear and understandable manner. This phase includes crafting your marketing message, copywriting, developing effective design and presentation, landing page optimization, and conversion rate optimization
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This also aims to collect internal and external information to define your marketing campaigns. What significant learning have you gleaned from your past efforts and how can you maximize this to improve your future campaigns? What have you learned from external research like benchmark reports, case studies, and networking with your peers?
As you come up with strategies to enhance your marketing campaigns, you may want to learn how to improve your keyword placement to increase your conversion rate, optimize your shopping carts, or improve your Google Product Listing Ads.
2. Experimentation – In evidence-based marketing, it’s also vital to evaluate which values, messaging, and processes are most effective in attracting your audience’s attention and evoking the intended response. This is where A/B split testing comes into the picture. As marketers, you need to know how to read and interpret your metrics and analytics to understand which method achieved your objective.
Experimentation also requires that you understand what makes tests valid or invalid, how to derive and assess results, and how to use this information to fine-tune your campaigns. Optimization and experimentation always go hand-in-hand in making marketing decisions based on what truly works.
Some areas you might want to explore during the experimentation phase are using A/B split testing to increase conversion rates, how to run effective online marketing tests, and learning about marketing methodologies.
3. Transformation – Using all the information at your disposal, it’s time to apply what you’ve learned and cascade this to your marketing team to create a cultural shift. The goal here is to change how your practice makes decisions based on tried and tested approaches (instead of relying on your ‘golden gut’ to achieve you marketing goals).
In a nutshell, marketing is anchored on a value proposition that is sifted through optimization and experimentation. Consistent experimentation and evaluation of the results help you arrive at the right decisions. The information and lessons you get from all the experimentation are used to form a customer theory.