Health and wellness entrepreneurs often have mixed feelings about marketing.
As a professional trained in behavioral change science to support people in reaching their health and wellness goals, the “business side” of running your office and programming can seem disconnected from your task.
Health and wellness professionals often like to spend most of their time working with their clients, not thinking about the ins and outs of their business. However, at the same time they know that effective business strategies, including the implementation of the marketing plan, are essential to the vitality of their business.
At AFPA, our mission is to provide you with the best possible education to become a first-class coach. At the same time, we aim to provide you with the insights and tools that will help you build and run a successful health and wellness business that stands out from the competition.
This article provides you with an overview of six industry-specific marketing issues and what to avoid.
Health and wellness work
Do you consider yourself an entrepreneur?
If the answer to this question is yes, then you already know that matching business skills with your knowledge of health and wellness is essential to being able to live off your profession.
If the answer is no, we encourage you to ask yourself why. Perhaps you consider yourself a healthcare provider, where meeting clients is just part of the job description; Many dentists and doctors who run their own clinics, for example, may not consider themselves entrepreneurs either.
Or maybe you know that business skills are important to successfully running a health and wellness coaching business, but you don’t feel like you can call yourself an entrepreneur.
We have news for you – whether you have a hundred clients and a suite of programs or just completed your own training program and have You have not yet reached your first customer-You are an entrepreneur. If being your own boss, managing your clients, and creating your own software is part of your vision for the future, then you are an entrepreneur.
Own it!
Why Marketing Is Important to Health and Wellness Professionals and Entrepreneurs
Now that we’ve established that health and wellness professionals who want to be their managers are entrepreneurs, it’s important to focus energy on the business side to put your skills and knowledge into practice.
It gives clients a rhyme and a reason for your profession – the desire to be a positive force in their lives is what drives most health and wellness professionals to pursue a degree. At the same time, offering your services value for money is what will allow your business to thrive.
But, to get clients whose services will be valuable to you and whose money will keep your business going, they need to know about you. a Marketing strategy It is a set of tools and tactics that, when combined together, will let your target audience know who you are, what you offer, and how your services can make their lives better.
However, the way of marketing is constantly changing based on trends, market size, competition, new technology and countless other factors. In addition, marketing strategies often change between industries. This is why industry-specific marketing tactics are so important.
3 marketing doses for the health and wellness industry
Put a face to your brand
On an individual level, health and wellness is a very intimate experience. When a person realizes that they will benefit from professional support to make changes in them healthy behaviors, Managing disease, navigating the health system, or implementing strategies to promote sustainable and realistic health practices, they seek support from someone they trust.
For the same reasons, people tend to look to individual doctors rather than medical companies for specialized care, your clients are more likely to look for you and your services if you put a face to your name.
Don’t be shy about telling your clients who you are, why training is important to you, and what makes you different from the competition.
Be consistent through different marketing channels, including social media, so potential customers feel like they can get to know you before they decide to look for your services.
Over time, by putting a face, experience, and personality to the brand, your potential customers will feel more confident in you.
Focus on excellence and quality rather than price
In general, there Three ways You can compete in any market: price, quality, differentiation.
In the field of health and wellness, it is generally recommended that you avoid competition on the basis of price and instead compete on the basis of quality or differentiation of your services. Firms that base their marketing strategy on competition by price are those that feel that their product has no added value over the competition, or at least does not have sufficient added value to compete. For example, companies that make generic products compete on the basis of price – they offer the same average quality as competition for a variety of household products at a lower price.
Your services are not like generic household products – they are unique and personalized services that can be part of drastic changes to the health and wellness of your customers. Your customers want to know that the investment will be worthwhile, and many are willing to spend more if you can guarantee the quality of your services or how your services differ from the rest.
Be consistent across marketing channels
In medium to large companies, it is not uncommon to feel that there are multiple people with multiple, sometimes conflicting viewpoints, speaking to the audience simultaneously. When this happens, it reflects a lack of consistent voice, tone, and values. This can not only confuse customers but also make them feel misled.
If one voice on your newsletter spoke to them who finally convinced them to click on your site, and then found it sounded like a completely different business as they read your page, you could potentially lose them as a lead.
For the sake of your brand and business, it is ideal that you invest the time to clarify your voice, tone, and messages before launching your marketing strategy. If you hire services, make sure they are willing and able to align with that brand.
3 things related to marketing in health and wellness
Don’t follow health trends to ‘catch up’
There is nothing wrong with using your social media channels to participate in trending and fun challenges that match your voice.
The trends you shouldn’t follow are cliched diets, fasting and potentially harmful wellness practices that are circulating online.
The health, wellness, and fitness industries are inundated with fads and fad trends that are so popular and then lose their appeal. In addition, many of these practices have not been limited to any evidence to support their supposed health-promoting role.
It can be tempting to become a health and wellness fad expert in order to ride the wave and increase your income. However, fads are, by definition, fleeting. Once the fashion is out, so will your success.
Instead, focus your business model and accompanying marketing strategy on established philosophies and evidence-based approaches. While it is natural and expected that you will make an effort to update your strategies over time, it is important to have strong values that will guide your strategies moving forward.
Do not exceed the budget
Marketing takes money. Fortunately, with effective digital marketing strategies, there are several ways to spend a little money with a big reward. At the same time, the endless tools and services that can help boost your marketing efforts may seem tempting to try.
Set a realistic marketing budget and don’t exceed it. When you see what’s working and have a stronger sense of how your business is growing, you can re-evaluate your marketing budget. However, you don’t want to go into debt for a marketing strategy only to know that the cost per new customer was four or five times what you expected.
In terms of marketing your personal services, set a budget based on your bandwidth. How many new clients can you deal with? If the answer is anywhere under twenty years, then using crowd advertising techniques and investing thousands of dollars is not a good idea.
However, if you have a digital product, such as an e-book or an app, you will not have the time constraints that you have with custom services. Consider the differences in marketing investment based on the time requirements on the part of your company once the sale is made.
Don’t Become Negative (Learn From The Tortoise and the Hare)
Marketing, like all business activities, needs regular attention and updates. If you recently had a successful marketing campaign – go celebrate and take that well-deserved break! But don’t become negative.
Remember the tale of the tortoise and the hare? The hare, which is naturally much faster than the tortoise, decided to compete in a race. The hare, who was ahead of the tortoise early on, decided to take a nap. When the hare fell asleep, the tortoise passed him and won the race.
While, of course, there is no “race” per se, in the area of health and wellness, satisfaction with your current perceived success may be an enemy of your future success.
Keep doing your research, monitoring your programs and marketing campaigns, and stay informed with directions. Keep in mind – you don’t need to do all this yourself! to avoid fatigue, Consider setting aside money in your budget for a freelance market researcher, content creator, or virtual assistant as needed (even if it’s only a few hours a week).
Home Takeaway
As a health and wellness professional who runs your own business, marketing is an important part of the vitality of your business. Marketing is how your customers get to know who you are, what you do, what makes you different, and how you can improve their lives. Marketing strategies and tactics usually change based on the industry.
In the health and wellness industry market, compete on the basis of differentiation or quality rather than price; put a face to your brand; And you have a consistent voice, tone and message across marketing channels. Don’t market on health fads, go over budget or become passive.
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