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Making the world better for people with cancer.

How a clear message, a sharp personal brand strategy and a cohesive visual brand established this physical therapist as a recognized thought leader in post-cancer care.

In the early 1990s, after a family member of hers was diagnosed with cancer, Dr. Leslie Waltke’s eyes were thrust open to a whole new world. Dr. Leslie Waltke, PT, DPT went from treating a few patients with cancer to opening a physical therapy private practice dedicated solely to people with cancer, to ultimately building the country’s largest integrated cancer rehabilitation program—The Waltke Cancer Rehabilitation Academy. 

The WCRA is a powerhouse consultancy that provides world-class cancer rehabilitation continuing education. Through its programming, the WCRA builds and grows vibrant, sustainable cancer rehabilitation programs for health systems and cancer centers. 

This work is meaningful. 

This work makes a difference.

And so we made it our mission to amplify Dr. Waltke’s vision of making the world a better place for people with cancer.

Enter: SimplyBe.’s Thought Leader Program.

With the task of bridging the gap between cancer rehabilitation and physical therapy, SimplyBe. defined an original personal brand identity and comprehensive marketing strategy for Dr. Leslie Waltke and the WCRA. Our omni-channel  strategy included:

  • a quarterly webinar series
  • a weekly video series
  • a monthly newsletter
  • ongoing social media support on Linkedin and her viral Facebook Group, The Recovery Room

We also identified strategic stages for notable speaking opportunities as well as high-impact podcast interviews and online publications to expand Dr. Waltke’s immediate audiences and reach. 

These channels were strategically selected in service of reaching her target audiences—physical therapists, cancer executives and people who have been affected by cancer. While her business goals are to create and/or directly impact cancer programs within hospital systems, her passion is to serve the countless individuals and families who have been impacted by cancer. Our strategy allowed her to satisfy both.

Dr. Leslie Waltke - Client Story - Color Palette

Human branding will connect with humans.

The existing WCRA visual brand didn’t fully represent the sophistication, breadth and depth of Dr. Leslie’s knowledge and human-focused approach to cancer care. It also felt clinical—something that those who were experiencing the impact of cancer had seen enough of. Our creative team was tasked with the challenge to find that perfect balance of a unique and welcoming visual brand identity that would play well in both medical-focused organizations and people-focused spaces.

Our creative team performed a comprehensive visual brand refresh inclusive of an updated brand philosophy informed by Dr. Waltke’s new core messaging, original logo design, color palette, fonts and full visual brand style guide.

Dr. Leslie Waltke - Client Story - Logos

Her unique library of logos creates a cohesive brand experience across channels and mediums.

With her new brand message and visual brand defined, we completely redesigned and optimized her website to reflect these updates. Our focus was to not only to create an updated digital platform to reflect her new branding, but to also drive conversions for her courses, webinars, and newsletters—resulting in a comprehensive and cohesive strategy

Utilize external outreach to reach new audiences.

We began active outreach in the summer of 2020, breaking through quickly to national outlets, achieving the WCRA’s goals of national recognition. Dr. Waltke and the WCRA have been featured in:

Dr. Leslie Waltke - Client Story - Featured In Logos

Within a few short months, SimplyBe. secured Dr. Leslie Waltke and the WCRA 14 unique media placements and 66,287,255 YTD total unique impressions in 2020.

In addition to Dr. Leslie’s active media presence, her new brand messaging gave her the tools to voice her goals and capabilities clearly and concisely as she continued to grow her network through interviews and appearances.

Grow your strategic network on Linkedin—online and off.

After optimizing Dr. Waltke’s LinkedIn profile per proven platform best practices and executing a consistent content cadence within her new brand message for a mere three weeks, Dr. Waltke received her first client lead via LI. Aside from garnering potential business, consistently sharing her placements and promotion for her webinar series increased her reputation as a thought leader and expert in post-cancer rehabilitation. Within four months of active execution on Linkedin, Dr. Waltke saw a 236% increase in followers and over 50,000 impressions across her content within that time period.

Dr. Leslie Waltke - Client Story - Posts

Create custom ways to serve your niche audiences.

With the primary objective of reaching cancer program executives and after much research, the SimplyBe. team determined the best way to directly tap into Dr. Waltke’s desired audience was through a webinar series. The content of the series was hyper-targeted to decision makers in hospital systems who would experience the most benefit and impact from WCRA programming. 

In October 2020, we created, marketed and oversaw Dr. Leslie’s first webinar: Stronger Cancer Patients & Programs with Cancer Rehabilitation. As a part of our marketing plan, we timed the launch of the WCRA website, created a lead page unique to the webinar as well as an extensive nurture campaign to keep her email list as engaged as possible leading up to the event. 

This first webinar had nearly 60 cancer program executives and physical therapists in attendance, resulting in dozens of business leads. Our strategy proved that targeting the right audiences is much more powerful and impactful than targeting simply large audiences. 

Dr. Leslie Waltke, PT, DPT is making the world better for people with cancer. To learn more about Dr. Waltke and The Waltke Cancer Rehabilitation Academy, visit waltkeacademy.com.

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