Alternative and integrative health-care practitioners should leverage the meat of return-on-investment (ROI) marketing to help grow their practices.
Where should you do ROI marketing?
The media you choose to bring your message to market is dictated by the scope of your practice. Are you regional, national, international or local? Each medium, be it print ads, direct mail, e-mail, online banners, trade shows or any other marketing medium, is unique in what it can and will do to promote and enhance your marketing goals.
Beyond geographical boundaries, ask yourself, “How does your buying audience tend to gather their information when making purchase decisions?” Is it online, through trade journals, via seminars? Listen to your clients and prospects, and help them learn about your massage practice in the ways they are already accustomed to doing their homework before engaging in a new practice.
Why should you do ROI marketing?
Maximize the effectiveness of the money you spend on marketing to fill up your appointment book, specifically to bring in new customers to your practice; to keep relationships going with existing clients to ensure they remain loyal; and to take market share away from other practitioners in your area—don’t be surprised, it’s common practice. Even if you’re not doing it, chances are high that your fellow practitioners are.
Most importantly, grow your practice through your existing customer base and with potential customers that meet your target profile. The reality is, if conventional medicine had its way, complementary and alternative medicine would remain a mystery— forever—within our Western culture. Therefore, the onus falls on each and every massage practitioner to take an active role in educating clients about their wellness options. Then, and only then, can they make informed choices.
How is ROI marketing accomplished?
It’s often been said that if you don’t know where you are going, chances are you will never get there. The same holds true for marketing. If you’re still a little baffled over the last marketing campaign you engaged in—a brochure printed directly from the copier and mailed to all your potential clients with a personal note from you that gave you no new leads, resulting in no new clients—then you know exactly what I mean.
Next time, think goals and objectives first and marketing tactics (brochures, ads, direct mail) as the tool for meeting your goals second. We think you’ll like the results.
For more than 25 years, Randi Drinkwater has successfully spearheaded high-impact marketing solutions for such global companies as IBM, Cisco Systems and WorldCom/MCI/UUNet. Today, Drinkwater resides as CEO for Alternative Growth Streams, (http://www.easygettingmorepatients.com/) a marketing-membership Web site designed exclusively to empower alternative and integrative health-care practitioners to grow their practices and get more patients/clients. She is well known and respected throughout the industry and is the recipient of the “BPAA Atlanta Peach” and “Southeast Addy” award for marketing excellence.