Close your eyes for a second and think about your ideal customer (for those of you in private practice, this is your ideal patient).
Now that you've got them in your mind, I'd like you to pause for a second and answer a few questions:
- what does this person fear the most (in regards to their health)?
- what makes this person feel like they're in control of their healing?
- what is the obstacle holding them back from living life to its fullest?
Unless you can answer these questions easily, you don't really know your target audience. And...unless you really know them (and how they think), how can you effectively market to them?
So think back to the first time they came into your office. What made them seek you out to begin with? Of course things like "pain relief" and "better mobility" may come to mind, but if you dig a bit deeper you may find that the real reason they come to you may be so that they can dance at their son's wedding or play in the floor with their grandkids and get back up to standing without help. Maybe they are a fierce competitor and not being on the top of their "game" is not an option for them or they grew tired of always getting winded walking up the stairs at work.
Learning the motivating factors for your ideal patient is the key to bringing more of them into your doors.
In today's modern culture, we are bombarded everywhere with ads and promotions trying to sell us something. Features, benefits and "buy now" offers are literally EVERYWHERE. This is a direct result of companies (usually with deep pockets and LARGE ad budgets) that employ marketing strategies and tactics to talk "at" their audience instead of connecting in a way that evokes an emotional connection with the reader. The name of the game here is frequency--the more they can appear in your newsfeed, the more their messaging gets through on a subconscious level.
But unless you have an endless advertising budget, this tactic doesn't work for the average business.
Instead, defining your niche--the group that you are most passionate about working with, is the first step to crafting a highly effective and targeted strategy that yields real results.
Once you can define your "buyer persona" (marketing terminology for the ideal person you're trying to reach), you can craft better emails, social media posts, ads and blog articles. Your content then come from a place of understanding the reader and speaking to what you know they need/want as opposed to just throwing things out there that you think are important to see what sticks.
Here are 3 quick strategies for defining your niche:
- Give your ideal customer/client/patient a name and a story. Yes, you read that correctly, come up with a name and a story behind your ideal patient that resonates with your offerings. If you're a family practice, this may include the mom, dad and a child. If you're an office that specializes in treating young athletes, this may be a high school football player with dreams of college scholarships. When you put a name and a story with this persona, it makes it much easier to have a full picture of what problem they may have and how you can solve it.
- Define the problem you're trying to solve for them. If you are a service provider in any industry (especially in healthcare), you are a problem-solver. Even if you consider yourself a wellness-based practitioner or a performance specialist, you are still solving a problem by meeting a need that your patient/client has. Take a deep dive (with your team if you have one) into what you do REALLY WELL and focus on that. You'll be amazed at how effective it can be to focus your marketing efforts in this way.
- Use this information to guide your marketing. Once you've defined your audience and ideal "buyer persona" then you can begin putting together your strategy to target them. Use this information to guide decisions on where you can find them online, the types of content they'll find valuable, images that will resonate with them and to craft the stories and language that will make them think you wrote it just for them.
Remember, people buy from people-not faceless brands. Getting to know your audience and focusing on your specific niche will allow you to centralize your marketing efforts, optimize your ad spend and create a long-term strategy that consistently brings in the people you want most as customers/clients/patients.
Want to learn more about how to employ these strategies in your practice? Join us for the Flight Path Business Institute's Launch Weekend, May 1-3 in Houston, TX. Learn more and get on the list here >>> https://pxlme.me/MdK7P-d0