People often think setting up a business takes a lot of hard work. It might be true to an extent. However, the real struggle starts when you have to run it and ensure it becomes successful.
Likewise, acquiring an acupuncture license, practicing alongside others, or opening your acupuncture clinic isn’t the hardest part of the acupuncture journey. It’s finding patients and being able to provide them with a memorable experience.
As of today, there are twelve thousand different acupuncture businesses thriving in the United States. The total size of the market is around six hundred million dollars. There was something that helped them grow so big, and it was the wonders of marketing.
Let’s look at different ideas on how you can reach out to a larger audience and get new patients, shall we?
What is Marketing for Healthcare Practices?
Marketing is defined as promoting, advertising, or selling services to create brand value. One may ask, why is marketing essential? The answer lies in awareness. How will you inform a group of people about your services if not by promoting them? Hence, don’t underestimate the power of marketing. Take advantage of it to run your acupuncture clinic. Let people know what you do, how you do it, and what its benefits are.
How to come up with a marketing strategy for an acupuncture clinic?
For many, marketing strategy merely means creating and running an advertisement across multiple platforms. Contrary to popular beliefs, this is far from what a marketing strategy is. Often, many people confuse a marketing strategy with a marketing plan. Both are different yet interlinked. To develop a marketing plan, you first need a solid marketing strategy.
Creating a marketing strategy takes in-depth market research. It isn’t something one can do within hours. Rather, a good amount of time must be dedicated to it before opening your acupuncture clinic. Here’s a brief insight into how you can create your marketing strategy:
- Identify your goals:
As an owner of an acupuncture clinic, you need to identify the primary objective of your business. Make sure it’s a SMART goal.
It’s important to ensure clarity of the goal. If you’re unsure about what you want for your business, you will have difficulty defining it for the patients. Set success criteria that help you track your progress and ensure the goal is attainable. Don’t set unrealistic expectations. Lastly, make a timeline to help you stay on track.
- Understand the market:
The foremost step is to analyze the existing businesses in the market. Look around and examine how others are running their business. What are their tactics, strategies, and mission statement? Gather as much information as you can.
Understand the market share of existing players and see how you can fit in by providing a unique value proposition. It’s important to decide on something that sets you apart. What will attract potential patients to your clinic if you offer the same things?
- Analyze the thinking of the patients.
Understand the customer base and their spending power. What attracts them to service? Put yourself in their shows and evaluate the possibilities. Conduct surveys to collect information on potential patients.
- Choose a specialty.
As an acupuncturist, you must understand that you cannot run a clinic without choosing a specialty. Pick a niche that you enjoy and believe can do wonders. Look what the patient base is for that niche; how many patients can you expect, how much are they willing to pay, and what outcome do they expect?
Download the template for a marketing strategy from https://www.aha.io/roadmapping/guide/marketing-templates/strategy-templates
Different ways to market your clinic acupuncture clinic:
A strong marketing plan is a key to running a successful acupuncture clinic. A patient won’t get to know about your services until you advocate your services to the public. The following are different ways you can market your clinic:
- Work on creative ads:
Understanding the correlation between human psychology and aesthetically-pleasing visuals is essential to creating an attractive advertisement. It must include a call to action that lures patients in. Work on describing the benefits of acupuncture, try to share patient experiences, and incorporate success stories of patients who recovered.
- Take advantage of social media:
Social Media Marketing has surpassed every other form of marketing. It’s important to understand that digital ads will likely reach a larger population than physical ads. The foremost priority should be targeting the right audience.
Recently, Tiktok has become an excellent platform for marketing and advertisement. Make informative videos to educate the viewers. Try to film procedure videos (with client’s consent) to give the people an idea about how it works. Instagram is suitable for influencer marketing. Look for influencers relevant to your goal and collaborate with them.
The advantages of social media marketing are:
- Brand Recognition
- Easy on the pocket
- Interaction with the patients outside the clinic
However, with advantages come limitations such as:
- It requires dedication and time.
- Must stay active 24/7 to answer queries.
- Online appointment booking:
Phone or in-person bookings are considered old school now. People prefer options that facilitate them and require minimal effort. The online appointment booking option is an important aspect that is often overlooked. Make sure you offer online appointment bookings on your website.
- Offer deals:
Do you often find yourself wondering about how to get new patients? Well, one way could be by offering a free consultation. Yes, you read that right. People love anything that they don’t have to pay for. This will help you introduce yourself to new potential patients that can turn into long-term patients.
- Take help from Google Ads:
A Google Ads campaign can help you promote your acupuncture clinic. Select a campaign that fits your budget and objectives. People claim to have increased traffic on their websites with Google Ads. Likewise, by targeting the right audience, Google Ads can also boost phone calls and physical visits.
- Invest in email marketing:
Once you’ve had customers coming in and an established contact list, try email marketing. It’s the quickest way to inform your customers about new services, improvements, and everything related to the clinic.
- Take help from review websites:
After you’ve set up the clinic and have patients come in, it’s time to focus on reviews. Let’s suppose a person got to know about you through an advertisement on social media. Before proceeding further and booking an appointment, they must research and look around for reviews. A strong profile on review websites can give fruitful results.
Don’t hesitate to ask your patients to write a review for you if they are satisfied with the service. Such small steps will help in making the clinic a successful business.
- Build a website:
The chances of someone bumping into your website and learning about your services are higher than someone walking into the store and inquiring. Take advantage of the resources provided by the modern age.
Invest in building a good website and list all your services. Add patient testimonials on the front page. Convey your mission statement. The point of focus is, what makes a website good? The following points must be considered to ensure an attractive website:
- Clean User Interface(UI)
- Good User Experience(UX)
- Fast Loading time
- Responsive for all screen sizes
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
To get a better idea, visit https://www.apple.com/.
How to attract new patients to an acupuncture clinic?
The key to attracting new patients to your acupuncture clinic is focusing on marketing tactics. People who reportedly work on a strong marketing plan don’t have difficulty bringing customers in. Hence, analyze your marketing plan time-to-time to identify any errors lurking around.
What if none of the marketing tactics are working?
There’s a slight possibility that things might not work. However, the problem lies in the implementation process, not the strategy itself. Evaluate the progress and try to identify the shortcomings.
Let’s suppose you’ve spent hundreds of dollars on ads. However, you’re not receiving the desired traffic. It may be due to inaccurate targeting. Start from scratch and focus only on targeting the relevant audience.
Conclusion:
You cannot expect new patients the next day of your opening. It’s a slow and steady process. Stand firm on your marketing ideas and focus on the implementation. It’s highly unlikely that all the tactics will work, but the probability of even half of them working is high.
