How To Make A Marketing Plan For A New Health & Wellness Practice

The Health & Wellness Practitioners Podcast

Welcome to the Health and Wellness Practitioners Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Danielle Angela. In this show, I and my guest experts will talk about everything from getting your practice started to developing your clinical skills, growing your practice your way, and of course, dealing with the real stuff like burnout and work-life balance. Whether you've been practicing for decades or just started your journey, you'll find something here for you. So take a deep breath and enjoy the show.

Hello, hello friends. Welcome to the Health and Wellness Practitioners Podcast, episode 238. I am your host, Dr. Danielle Angela, and in this episode, we are going to be talking about how to make a marketing plan for a new practice or business.

Now, before you run away from this podcast, I know that you don't like hearing about marketing, but I just want to encourage you that, you know, if you went through the time to study the modality that you practice, whether it's midwifery, chiropractic, acupuncture, massage therapy, whatever it is, you are a smart person. You are capable of learning new things, and marketing is just a skill. It's just a skill. Some of us have, you know, invested a lot of time and energy in developing that skill, and others haven't. But wherever you are, it's okay. You can learn the skill of marketing.

And don't forget too that, you know, marketing is the essential, like the first component, the first function of running a business. And if you want to be able to help people, then you've got to be able to get the word out about what you do and how you serve in your practice, right? So don't be afraid. And well, actually, even if you are afraid, it's okay. You can still move forward and learn the skill of marketing anyway. And remember why you are doing this. It is ultimately at the end of the day to be able to help more people. And as a reward, you make money and you get to live a better life.

Okay, so. When it comes to making a marketing plan for a new practice, it can get really confusing real fast because there are so many different strategies and tactics that you can take, especially in 2023 with so many different social media platforms.

Before we dive into specifics, I want to give a shout out to one of my favorite books on this topic, which is the One Page Marketing Plan. And the One Page Marketing Plan kind of breaks down the overall strategy and then the tactics. So the strategy is like the approach and the tactics are the “what to do”. If you really wanna go deeper into this topic and you want to spend time improving your skill set and marketing, then I definitely highly recommend getting the one-page marketing plan. It is called the One Page Marketing Plan, but it is not a one page book. It's just FYI.

Okay, so...as I was mentioning, there are so many different things you can do and so many different ways you can go with marketing your business in today's world, right? So let me give you first, two things that I really, really, really encourage new practitioners or people who are starting a new practice; you could be a very seasoned practitioner and not a seasoned business owner, right? You could be in practice for two decades and not have ever owned your own business, but maybe you want to start one now whatever the case is. if you are starting your own channel business. I highly encourage you to get a jumpstart on social media as soon as you can.

So if you are a student and you're studying your modality, you're a chiropractic student or an acupuncture student, it doesn't really matter what you're studying. Start a social media account for your future business as soon as you know that there will be a future business. This really freaks a lot of people out, by the way, because they're like, oh my gosh, I'm just a student, I know nothing, I don't even have a business yet, can I really put it out there? And the answer to that question is yes, you can. And the only person that can really decide that you can't is you. Although, yes, you have to abide by the user terms of agreement for any social media platform that you decide to use - you can start using that social media platform within those terms of agreement anytime that you are ready to take the leap.

And I know as a student, you might be thinking, well, I can't give people advice. I don't know enough information, et cetera. But you know that most of the things that you follow on social media are not educational per se, right? They're not teaching you the encyclopedia. Oh my gosh, I just aged myself big time by saying the encyclopedia. I used to go to the library and read the encyclopedia before dance class after school. Okay, that was a side note, but you don't have to teach people in-depth information. In fact, you can just share about your life and share about who you are and what you're studying and why you're excited about what you're studying. And that's really enough.

But imagine that you get a one to two year jumpstart on social media before you even start the business. You'll be so much better off because the people that follow you will already know what's up. They'll already know why you're doing what you do. They'll already know what it is that you've been learning and what you're offering. And they'll be in the know when it's time for you to open your business and start booking new clients or new patients. So I highly, highly, highly, highly, highly encourage you to get started on social media as soon as you are willing to take the leap.

Okay, the second thing that you need to start doing as soon as possible is narrowing down a target market for your future business. Now, again, this can be kind of a scary suggestion for some people because they think that I'm telling them that they need to have a niche and they don't have to have a niche to have a target market.

In other words, that doesn't mean that you have to be an expert in something very, very specific in order for you to be clear about who the target market is for your business. So I know we've talked a lot, a lot, a lot about target marketing and ideal patients or clients on this podcast, but it bears repeating because it gets misunderstood so often.

So hear me, okay? Listen up. This is important. This is really important as a future business owner. In the quest to become a leader, you want to have a successful business, then you need to have a defined target market for that business. This is not the same as having a niche practice. A niche practice definitely requires having a very clear target market, but the beauty of target marketing is that when you're marketing to a select group of people, you will actually attract all kinds of people through your marketing. So you've probably heard me say this before, but I'll say it again. Marketing to everyone is like marketing to no one. When you're just trying to market to everyone, nobody really listens because it's not connecting with people on a deeper emotional level.

When you're clear about who your target market is, you can then connect with those people on a deeper level because you can express your understanding of what they struggle with and what they're really going through in their real lives and also that you can help them.

See the difference? So yes, while you need to have a target market to have a successful business or practice, it doesn't mean that you have to have a niche practice. Your target market will be attracted to what your target market is expressing through your marketing, but so will lots of other kinds of people. And that doesn't mean that your target marketing i...