Here’s an interesting idea for you; next time you’re watching TV and are bored by the adverts, have a closer look and work out who each advert is aimed at. Notice the particular language, visuals, sounds and the message used for each one.
How do they get their message across? Do they use a clever technique such as humour, fear of loss or the desire to look cool?
If you’re writing your own website copy or blog posts, then this is the key way to help you write decent copy. For instance, last week, a Client of mine asked me to write a blog about the benefits of visiting the Osteopath before winter sets in. No problem, I thought. But after several hours and cups of tea, both my mind and my page were blank. Then I realised that I had missed out a crucial element.
Once I had emailed him and got some background on who we were going after and why, I got totally inspired with them in mind. Very quickly, I had the first draft knocked out in no time, ready for revision and tweaking.
This process of identifying who you want to attract is critical in every type of marketing you do. I hear Osteopaths proclaiming all the time that ‘we can treat anybody from newborns to people in their nineties’. Of course it’s brilliant that this is true but you wouldn’t speak to the mother of the newborn in the same way as you’d speak to the nonagenarian. So, in marketing terms being able to treat everybody can be quite a curse! Because in trying to market to everyone your message seems confusing and what you say won’t resonate with anyone in particular.
This is why identifying your Perfect Patient in is absolutely crucial in order to create effective marketing. Module 2 in my Osteobiz Club tackles this in great detail because this is one of the quickest and easiest ways to market effectively and grow your business.
Your instinct might still be to object that you don’t want to exclude anyone from your awesome treatments. But the truth is that they will still come to you but you will be targeting your actual marketing to one group of people at a time so that what you say really ‘speaks’ to them and causes them to act.
This week has been very busy in the Osteobiz Office. So many blogs have been ordered that I’m practically scribbling in my sleep! Last summer my friend and Osteopath suggested that one area many science-biased Osteopaths struggled with was the creativity of writing blogs. At the time I couldn’t quite see how I could do that because, of course, you can’t have the same blog post appearing on twenty different websites.
The great thing I have come to realise, however, is that every Osteopath has their own idea about how their treatments help others. Additionally, once we have nailed who exactly your Perfect Patient is, my pen literally whizzes along the page to bring the two together and focus the content directly at that target market.
“Simples,” as a certain animated memorable meerkat (selling insurance to people who love cute, furry animals) would say.
