The first ONE of the Five Ones approach to focus your marketing is all about picking the right niche or target market for your practice.
This can make or break your practice and marketing success.
Deciding on who is your ideal target for your practice sometimes cause doctors to worry about whether they will pick the right niche for them.
They worry if they will miss out on another target market that would be better, will they miss out on a different niche that might be better or easier to attract?
Worry not! By focusing in on one niche is the fastest way to grow your practice and your income.
When Dr. Miranda in Toronto came to me first she was seeing all types of patients for all different health issues and she was almost burnt out. When she focused in on one niche, her marketing started working much better and her practice and income grew rapidly.
Remember, you are not married to your niche, you can date your chosen target market first to see how you like them before committing to them.
I’m almost reluctant to say this next part yet, but remember you can also decide (after you launch your first Five Ones campaign) to copy the process for another niche, but don’t try to attract multiple targets in any one campaign. My advice is launch your first five ones campaign and test it out, then automate the process before adding a second niche.
Now, let’s pick your ideal target.
Choosing who to target with your campaigns is as much about the area of health you want to focus on as it is about the demographics and psychographics of the people you want to work with.
Assuming you are looking to build your local practice for one on one patient care, not online programs. I’ll address that in another blog when we discuss your ONE solution.
What makes a patient ideal?
First of all let’s talk about their mindset.
As a naturopathic doctor you want to work with patients who:
- Believe in natural medicine
- Understand natural medicine is not a “quick fix”
- Are committed to the journey ahead
- Are motivated to follow your care plan
- Understand the importance of preventative care
- Are open and honest in their communication
- Live within 20 miles of your clinic (yes some may come from further away and telemedicine eliminates the distance issue)
- Can afford your fees without relying on insurance
- Know how important it is to invest in their health
I think you would agree that patients like that are ideal for most doctors.
The next thing to consider is the demographics of your ideal target. Male, female, age, marital status, income level, profession etc. That is often determined by what area of health you want to focus on.
For example, if you love helping women balance their hormones as they approach perimenopause and/or menopause, it becomes instantly clear that you need to target females, 50+ years old, with an income level of over $60,000 per year or over $100,000 depending on where your clinic is. But if you prefer to help people with digestive issues, that broadens your target considerably. It could be for both men and women and the age group can be 30+. If skin care and eczema are your area of expertise, you may want to target professions that are known to cause skin irritation or professions where having great looking skin is important.
I’ll go deeper into picking the area of health to focus on tomorrow’s blog post, but for now, start thinking about what health concerns are you confident you can help with and you love to work on with patients. There may be several, but tomorrow we’ll narrow it down to your top one.
Why does the age and gender matter? It matters because it determines the language and tone of your marketing message to appeal to the right type of people and where best to invest your marketing time and money reach them. Your trendy TikTok reels won’t reach the menopausal 60 year old mom and likewise your Facebook posts and ads won’t effectively reach the 20-30 year old crowd.
The income level speaks for itself, they need to be able to afford your fees and not be relying on insurance to cover their appointments or treatments.
Hopefully this has helped you start to think about the ONE Target for your Five Ones campaigns. Tomorrow we’ll continue to narrow down your niche when we discuss what primary problem or health issue you want to help patients with.
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