Many practitioners and practice owners, particularly during the building phase try to be all things to everyone. This is driven primarily by fear, fear you may lose a potential client.
In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
You’ve heard the saying, ‘jack of all trades, master of none’? This is the trap and ultimately it leads to less clients not more!
In my 30+ years of practice I’ve come to realize one important practice building thing. The tighter you niche the more clients you attract and the faster you build.
That may seem counter intuitive I know. If this brings up fear and trepidation understand this, it means you’re sitting in scarcity not abundance.
It’s all about allowing the universal law of attraction. This says you attract the same vibration you emanate. Your vibration relates to how you are being, your energetic resonance if you like. The clearer this message, the more you attract what you want.
Think about this. You collaborate with a team of health practitioners. You all offer different skills and modalities. You are all experts in different areas. The goal is providing the best care and health outcomes for your clients. To achieve this, you need to recognise when and who to refer to. If you are trying to be a ‘jack of all trades’ your colleagues are going to get confused very quickly. Not only that, it’s virtually impossible for them to keep your referral front of mind whilst managing their own clients.
On the other hand, if you provide a clear, concise niche describing your expertise you are much more likely to get referred to. You are also much more likely to get the kind of clients you really want.
Now here’s the thing. You will not repel all the rest. They will still come, it’s just your grade A clients will be first in line.
You start to be known for your expertise and word will spread however, the message will also be that you must be good at what you do in general, and clients will come to you with other problems.
The more pointed you are, the more niched and sub-niched you are, the more clients are attracted to you.
This then enhances you overall reputation. You may have heard the saying, ‘your reputation precedes you’.
Being a ‘jack of all trades’ is in fact about remaining small, staying under the radar, not attracting too much attention, and this all based on fear. On the other hand, niching or acknowledging your expertise is about fully embracing the awesome YOU. I recommend the latter!
So, let’s deep dive into a core part of your branding process, developing your expertise / your niche:
Determining your ‘Niche’ or what we call your ‘target market’ should be top of your list as a practice owner.
Niching converts a warm lead into a hot one. The clearer your message the more likely your ideal client will turn up. Niching requires a laser focus on the area and service you are expert in. And being an expert is not as a far away as you may think. Just think of areas you love to work in, e.g. rotator cuff injuries, irritable bowel conditions, migraine etc. You love these areas and are therefore, passionate. Your passion drives you to naturally research and educate yourself even more than you are currently are, and this elevates your expert status. That’s it. You don’t necessarily need to have a PhD on the subject!
And you can have a few niches running at once and you can review your niches over time. We recommend 2-3 niches maximum and reviewing every quarter. You can of course just have one and stick to it particularly if it’s bringing in the right clientele.
Choosing a niche influences your marketing and promotional planning; the types of niches with examples and some market research strategies.
The idea is to do what you love and then communicate clearly to your market place. This will influence your conversion rate because your clients already want or need your service.
Niching naturally creates a target market which is a community sharing common attributes, e.g. age, gender, opinion, interest, or location and who will buy your niche service / product. Your target market needs to be large enough to generate business from but also unique to differentiate from other markets.
You need to understand your target market or what we call your ‘ideal client’ intimately in order to make your business viable. There needs to be enough demand and interest and you need to know the optimal communication channels so you can understand their thoughts and behaviours.
This is to enable you to make smart choices about offers, marketing strategies, fees and product-service mix.
This is also called ‘market research’ and is something you need to get familiar with to stay ahead of the competition.
SPECIAL COMMENT: If niche tightly enough, your competition will be minimal or non-existent. This is why in one practice, you can have several Myotherapists each with their own niche or expertise.
ID your target market starts with describing your ‘ideal client’. Think about your best client ever, the one who remained loyal to you thru thick and thin, always pays on time and without complaint and never misses or is late. Someone who gets you and what you do and why you do what you do. They just get it.
You want more of these rights.
In broader terms your ideal client needs to have four fundamental characteristics:
- They have a particular need, want or desire.
- They have the financial ability to purchase your solution to their need, want or desire.
- They have the power to decide to purchase your product or service.
- They have access to your business, through a physical location, Internet or catalogue.
Once you’re covered these bases you can now look at what it is you offer. Look out for my article titled ‘The Power Pitch’ which describes crafting your message clearly and concisely so you can attract your Grade A client.
For the purposes of this article let’s think first about these foundational concepts:
- What is the need, want or desire that my product or services fulfil?
- What does my product or service cost?
- Who makes the decision to purchase my product or service (who has the power or authority)
- How are my products or services accessed?
Next let’s look at your demographics. Your local shire can provide immense information about who lives in your neighbourhood.
You will need to consider the following parameters and ask if they are relevant:
| Age, Income, Gender, Generation, Ethnicity, Marital status, Family Size, Occupation, Religion, Language, Education. |
Next is psychographics, e.g. personality, values, attitudes, interests, or lifestyle.
Now you are ready to describe your ideal client.
My ideal patient has a basic understanding in the following areas:
- Wellness care / maintenance care vs acute care.
- Innate intelligence.
- The subluxation.
- No pain does not mean nothing wrong.
- Adjustments and their effect on the whole person.
- The rationale behind scheduling.
- An adjustment reaction.
My ideal patient…
- Keeps appointments as much as possible – provides maximum notice to clinic if unable to attend.
- Refers family and friends, in particular their children.
- Pays for each visit.
- Self-motivates with regard to scheduling.
- Adheres to regular exercise and stretching; makes ergonomic and lifestyle changes.
- Is a happy person who enjoys visiting the clinic?
- Has monthly wellness visits for life.
Now you can test and measure.
Am I right about my target audience assumptions; Is my target audience interested in my new product or service; Do I need more information about my target audience’s purchase motivations; What new trends are my target audience following; What recent economic developments have impacted my target market; How can I improve my customer service; Has my target market changed in the past year?
Audiences, trends, products and services change over time so review NICHE-TARGET MARKET GAP regularly.
Just like learning your skills, this process may seem a little daunting at the beginning but with persistence it will become easier.
Developing your niche – your expertise is no different. This is why we run the Practice Leverage Revolution, to show you how to ID and develop your niche’s and sub-niches so that you can target your ideal market.
PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are 7 ways I can help you build your wellness practice.
Sign up for my ‘30 Practice Leverage Tips in 30 days’ e-course, a roadmap to leveraging and scaling your wellness practice – Click Here.
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About the author:
Dr. Andrew Arnold is a Chiropractor and Naturopath, and ACTP accredited Business coach. He is the founder of Million Dollar Wellness.
Andrew believes for health practices thriving, practitioners and practice owners need to, what he refers to as ‘step up into their power’. Leadership is about leading. Sounds simple right? So why are so many practitioners are struggling to make a living, eventually burning out and giving up?
Andrew has successfully built 2 multi-disciplinary, health practices to nearing a million pa. He has mentored many leading practice owners helping, them reach this target and beyond.
Andrew is married to Dr. Linda Wilson and has two children, Isaac and Bella. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.
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