As a health practitioner, you want to attract your ideal clients online and grow your health business. However, the online world can be overwhelming, especially if you're not comfortable with the idea of using tactics that you find unprofessional, such as dancing around in vapid videos on social media. The good news is that there are more effective ways to attract your ideal clients online without resorting to these tactics, even if you have a limited budget or understanding of paid advertising.
Let's explore some of these strategies and how to implement them in your health business.
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How To Identify Your Ideal Client
The first step in attracting your ideal clients online is identifying who they are. Who are the people that you really want to work with? What are their needs, wants, and pain points? Assessing your ideal client using a free tool like the Avatar Accelerator empowers you to create content and messaging that speaks directly to them, addresses their specific concerns, and takes into account the emotional, psychological, and financial downstream consequences of the challenges they face.
Showing this level of empathy and care increases their know-like-trust factor for you and encourages them to invest in working with you.
Creating High-Value, Symptoms-Based Content For Social Media
Once you've identified your ideal client, the next step is to create valuable content that resonates with them. The trap for brilliant health minds like you is that you'll naturally gravitate towards providing details about specific diagnoses and what's happening in the body. While that is understandable given your education, and though it works well to keep existing fans happy, it is not what works to attract new people into your online sphere. Attracting new people requires you to provide symptoms-based content.
By prioritizing symptoms-based content, your status is elevated in the consumer's mind because you are the genius who helps them connect the dots between their symptoms (stated in plain language) and the possible diagnosis and treatment options.
To apply this to your marketing, consider a headline that says "BALANCE YOUR HORMONES." That statement assumes the reader understands that their stubborn weight gain, mood swings, or inability to control their body temperature are related to an imbalance in their hormones. As a practitioner, you know that. They might not because they lack your medical knowledge. You'd be better off with a headline that picked one of their most despised symptoms and helped them realize there could be a hormonal component. Something like, "EXPERIENCING UNUSUALLY STUBBORN WEIGHT GAIN?" In the text of the post, you could reveal the connection between a change in hormones and why they're not succeeding with the strategies that have worked in the past.
The type of content you create is up to you, but as a professional health business strategist and marketer for the last twelve years, here's an insider tip to consider before you create a content plan.
Platforms such as Instagram and TikTok prioritize recency over relevance, which means the creators relying on those platforms for attracting new health clients carry a heavy burden to churn out fresh content. Essentially, you are doing all the hard work of creating quality content to keep users engaged on these platforms while they rake in millions of dollars from advertisers. But your content - since the algorithm prioritizes based on how recently you posted it - will be virtually lost in a digital sea within days or even hours, regardless of how much better it may be than newer content.
Platforms such as YouTube prioritize relevance over recency, and your content will be found in topic-related searches for years to come. This makes the platform ideal for those just starting to grow an audience, as it is for those with a strong following. You'll get even better traction on this platform if you drive engagement to your content when it is freshly released by notifying your email list and followers on other platforms.
Since video content also lends itself to free and easy transcription, you can post that written content on your blog and embed the video to rack up more video views, providing more social proof for the high value of your content.
Whatever content you provide on social media, it has one essential role to play in attracting new clients: to leave people wanting more. When your social media content excites people to learn more from you, that empowers you to make invitations to leave the platform and come to an online property you control, such as your website or landing pages (web pages to collect names and emails in exchange for value).
Creating An Email List
The all too often overlooked job of your social media efforts is getting people onto an email list you control. This is referred to as Social To List Conversion, the key to the long-term success of your health business because it moves people from platforms you do not control to a list you do control. This allows you to put content in front of people when you decide so that you're no longer at the mercy of fickle and ever-changing social media algorithms. Not to mention, we never know when a platform that is popular today will fade into irrelevance, like MySpace and countless others. A well-nurtured email list is the ongoing audience that matters most, purchases at the highest rate, and refers more people who need you. Be intentional about encouraging list growth with your online properties.
Creating An Online Property Designed For List Growth
Too many health professionals struggle to create a website they like, and even more end up with an online property that does not serve its most essential function; email list growth. Everything, even the process for booking free consultations, should add new prospects to your email list.
A site visit, sales page visit, or even booking directly through your online scheduling service offers you a chance to land a new health client. When your online properties serve the primary function of collecting the name and email addresses of interested people, you become digitally connected. This grants you infinite opportunities to educate, invite, and offer these leads your services, programs, and any trusted products you promote.
Remember above when the goal of your social media was clarified as leaving people wanting more? Your online properties, which consist of your main site and your landing pages, should be the avenue through which these new potential clients come to satisfy their desire for more. This allows you to position in front of these prospects' invitations to articles, videos, consultations, and virtually any offer that makes logical sense and leads to revenue for your health business.
Cultivating Relationships By Leveraging Automated Email Health Marketing
You can build relationships and nurture leads over time by building an email list of potential clients and providing them with valuable content and information. Remember, the vast majority of people need multiple online interactions before they feel safe investing in your offers.
Focus on providing value and building relationships with your subscribers, and the sales will come naturally over time.
Be sure to automate - at the very least - two email sequences. One email sequence should immediately be triggered when a new list member opts in for any asset you provide, such as an e-Book, a checklist, or a video. We recommend that you follow up with an automated short series of five to seven emails specific to the topic of the asset for which they exchanged their name and email address.
The second suggested email sequence is called the Long-Term Nurture, and it is a failsafe of sorts. Just in case you get too busy to keep a steady communication cadence with your email list members, the Long Term Nurture is an automated sequence that provides high-value content, success stories, and invitations to offers so you stay relevant in their world. This prevents you from having a cold, often called a dead email list.
Collaborating With Related Businesses and Influencers
Collaborating can be a powerful way to attract your ideal clients online without dancing around on short-form video platforms. By working together, you can leverage each other's audiences and reach more potential clients.
For example, you might collaborate with another health practitioner to co-create content, host a joint webinar, or create a summit on a specific topic. Or you could reach out to influencers in your industry and offer them valuable education or insights in exchange for exposure to an audience they have taken years to cultivate relationships with.
Being a guest on a popular podcast is a ripe collaboration opportunity that cannot be rated highly enough. When podcast hosts present you as a respected guest, they are edifying you to their well-cultivated audience. This increases the likelihood that listeners will follow your call to action to get more content from you in exchange for their name and email. Voila! List growth without Tik Tok.
Prioritizing Connection Over Commerce
Finally, it's essential to build relationships with your ideal clients online. When you focus on connecting, commerce happens naturally over time. This means you need to automate as much of your marketing as possible so that the time you spend on email or social media is fully focused on engaging with prospects, responding to their comments and messages, and providing them with valuable content and information.
While it may sound intimidating to use technology that handles the email automation suggested above, it can be surprisingly easy to navigate with the right help. To get you started, here's access to a practitioner-friendly platform and two free templates to help you with social-to-list conversion.
Another simple tool for professional designs and social media posting automation is Canva. Using Canva's Content Planner and Bulk Create feature combined with Chat GPT (or other artificial intelligence copywriting tools) can make creating and automating posts for an entire quarter easy. Here's a video that shows you how.
When it comes to health marketing, the more you can do to set it and forget it, the more bandwidth that leaves open for you to truly connect. By interacting with your ideal clients, you'll attract more clients to your health business and have accurate insights that empower you to provide better service and support to those clients over time. This will help you build a strong reputation and grow your health brand long-term.
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Summary
Attracting your ideal clients online doesn't have to involve dancing around in videos or resorting to unprofessional tactics. Simply follow this proven formula:
- Share valuable, symptoms-based content on relevance-focused social media platforms in ways that leave people wanting more.
- Effectively convert attention on social media to your email list by having a website and landing pages that focus on list growth.
- Expand your email list rapidly by collaborating with other health-related businesses and influencers through podcasts and other co-created forms of content.
- Cultivate relationships with leads by leveraging automated email marketing and social posts so your time is reserved for interacting.
- Once this type of online net is built to capture and nurture your ideal clients, you'll be ready to start with simple, slowly ramped-up paid media strategies.
This combination empowers you to attract your ideal clients online and grow your business without breaking the bank or compromising your values.
Get out there and start attracting your ideal clients today! They need your expert help.
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