June 2006
Business Village Town Meeting...
A Report
Winner of Drawing for Free Purple
Ink Consultation:
Charles Walters, Phoenix
Institute
CONGRATULATIONS CHARLES!!
Hope you felt some benefit from our evening together. We
did! It was a lively discussion with several creative minds
coming together to focus on solutions rather than the obvious
obstacles. Dawn was a gracious hostess and the wonderful
New Jersey Center for Healthy Living (NJCHL) provided a
perfect venue.
Dawn’s concept for Alliance for Integrated Healthcare
is at its core a business incubator. The Alliance in conjunction
with NJCHL provides the necessary structure and services
for small or start-up businesses (geared to healthcare
practitioners). With this conducive backdrop, it was our
goal to offer an interactive and experiential evening that
would stimulate and promote solution-oriented discussion
on some of the issues facing small healthcare practices.
Here are some notes on what we gathered from our time together:
Why you showed up . . .
•
Networking
•
Explore new ways to market business
•
Transition from corporate to practice
•
Growing business
•
Focus on consumer – how to target them/reach them
•
Referral marketing
What we talked about . . .
•
Differentiation/Market Positioning -
o Confusing key messaging – clearly define your specialty
and what makes you
different.
o ‘Elevator Pitch’ – need to be able
to describe what you do in a couple of short
sentences.
o Claim your Niche – hard to be everything to everyone,
although it is tempting in the
beginning and often necessary
when getting started. While it may appear to narrow
your
client base, it surprisingly opens up opportunities with
a clearer focus.
•
Identification of Market – Demographics
o Imagine your
dream clientele. The clearer you are about what you want,
and who
you want to serve, the easier it
will be to identify and reach out to your market.
•
Credibility factor – while progress has been made
toward “mainstreaming” these types of practices
and businesses, there is still a large number of people
that seek healthcare from a pharma-medical approach. Even
those who have begun to utilize alternative or complementary
methods will turn to a ‘quick fix’ solution
when they are fearful and uneducated about their options.
Therefore, education is key to helping ease this cultural
transition and create informed and empowered consumers.
o Case Studies – one solution to increase credibility
and to simply illustrate how your
methods have helped people.
•
The bottom line – Sales: How much is a convertible
lead worth to you?
o Important to examine how your ‘sales’ process
works.
o How do you generate leads – how do clients find
you?
o Once they find you, how many of them turn into clients?
Relevant Statistics based on the Questionnaire filled out
that night . . .
Website
There are plenty of studies and lots of evidence that use
of Internet media is quickly becoming a basic requirement
for successfully marketing a small business. The trick
is to find ways to make it work for you specifically. Like
a brochure, it is nice to have, but if people don’t
see it, it doesn’t help support your business.
55% have website
40% don’t
5% didn’t answer the question
of those that have a website . . .
25% were generating
leads that were converted into clients
50% were updating
regularly
Out of 15 questionnaires 11 answered the question about
what percentage of people they believe seek healthcare
professionals through the Internet.
6 of the 11 – think that 60 – 80%
5 of the 11 – think that 20 – 40%
PR
22.5% stated that ‘advertising’ was PR – this is a common problem.
Just like you, those of us who do public relations professionally have to educate
our clients as well. Don’t feel bad, but realize this can be one of the
most valuable and cost-effective tools you have in your marketing tool kit. Take
the time to learn a little about it and how it can specifically work for small
businesses and practitioners in particular.
How would you look for a healthcare practitioner?
9 of 15 answered – through a friend/word of mouth
5 of 15 answered – regional publications
0 of 15 answered – insurance or hospital network
1 of 15 answered – call myself
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