Marketing your podiatry practice is crucial to its growth and providing you with a steady flow of new patients. Developing a thought out plan and executing it is crucial to effectively marketing your practice. These are the main areas to consider:
- What are your Unique Selling Points? (USP)
- Social Media
- Define your target audience
- Choose your branding
- Traditional media
- Take action
USP
Podiatry practices should focus on their unique selling points and use social media to get the message out.
Podiatrists are often the first line of defence against foot problems, so they need to market themselves as the go-to resource when someone's feet hurt.
Focus on your unique selling points. Every podiatry practice is different, so it's important to promote what makes yours special. If you offer specialisations or advanced techniques that other practices don't have, make sure potential patients know about them. If you're located in a convenient location, emphasise that. If you have a great reputation for customer service, talk about it!
Social Media
Use social media wisely. Podiatrists should use social media as an educational tool to help patients understand how to prevent and treat common foot problems like bunions or plantar fasciitis. They can also use it to reach out to current patients who might benefit from additional care - for example, if a patient is about to go on holiday or has recently injured his or her ankle playing basketball.
This isn't just about getting new patients; it's also about communicating with those who already see you regularly so they feel part of the team at your clinic.
Define Your Audience
One of the most important things you'll do as a podiatrist is to decide who your target audience is. This is especially true on social media, which allows you to reach a huge number of people at once.
This first step to defining your target audience is understanding who your ideal patient is. This may be a little easier than it sounds because there are some commonalities among people who need foot care services.
For example, if you work with people who have diabetes, they likely have another chronic condition that needs treatment and management in addition to their diabetes. So when deciding how to define your target audience, think about what other health problems they may have and which ones are going untreated.
Let's take this concept one step further and say that these patients also need regular exercise and good nutrition for strong bones and muscle strength - both of which are necessary for proper foot care. In this case, your target audience might be middle-aged men and women who want to keep their feet in good shape for years to come.
Now that you know who your ideal patient is, how do you find them? The best way is through online research using Google Analytics.
Choose Your Brand
We are all guilty of buying things we don't need because they're on sale. But when it comes to branding your practice, this is not the way to go.
If you are considering changing your brand or creating a new one, here are four things you should consider:
- Decide what reflects you and the business. Think about what would be appealing. Think about what will look good on your website and leaflets. Think about if it's easy to understand.
- Think about what reflects your personality and the personality of your business. If the brand is too corporate or too informal, it may not resonate with your audience.
- Think about if there is enough variation in the colour palette and font so that people can easily read it without straining their eyes or getting confused.
- Think about how long you want this brand identity to last; some brands change yearly, other every two years etc...
Traditional Media
Traditional media is still important because it reaches a wider audience and helps build credibility. Here are some examples:
Print ads
Printed media can still get you great results if you know how to leverage it properly. There are many ways to use print ads to help promote your business, including direct mail, newspaper ads and magazine ads. Each one serves a different purpose and works best in different situation, but they all have their advantages over other options when used correctly.
Radio
Radio is another great option for promoting your business, especially if you live in an area where there are multiple radio stations broadcasting at once! Radio spots can be very effective for local businesses because the listeners will often hear them multiple times during the day or week. This makes them more likely to remember your message when they need your services!
Take Action
If you're going to make a plan to market your business, you have to know what you want to accomplish. What's the goal? Are you trying to grow your patients? Are you trying to increase patient lifetime value?
The first step in making a marketing plan is deciding what you want the outcome of that plan to be. Once you know what your goal is, it will be much easier for you to figue out how best to get there. But if there's no clear destination, how do we know when we've arrived?
The key here us setting up a process that allows us to measure progress. That way we can see whether our efforts are working or not. If they're not working, we can try something else until we find something that does work (or at least gets us closer).
Once you know what you want to achieve, the next step is figuring out how to get there. This is where most people get stuck. They have a vague idea of what they need to do but no concrete plan for how to actually make it happen. That's why it's so important that we break our goals into manageable steps.
The next thing to do is identify all the different ways you can reach your audience. Think about things like:
- What content do they consume? (blogs, podcasts, etc.)
- Where do they consume? (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)
- How do we get our content in front of them (social media ads, email marketing campaigns)