Is your business local? Or are you seeing a wide range of patients from everywhere?
Most practices are primarily local, meaning your current patients are pulling from a relatively small geographic area, and their demographics and psychographics tend to be pretty similar. This is why you may have been told to think global but market local.
Micromarketing is a marketing strategy that emphasizes tactics to focus on a small group of highly targeted consumers. For this to be effective, you need to narrowly define an audience by specific characteristics, such as ZIP code, gender, household income, interests, profession, etc. You are drilling down to target a specific segment of patients based on who they are and their shopping and spending habits.
Once this target audience is delineated, the next step is to create campaigns to reach that specific segment of prospective patients. This is an ideal approach for small businesses with limited budgets.
Think BIG
Conversely, macromarketing takes the opposite approach. It goes large in scope and casts a wide net. For example, Super Bowl ads or billboard on a major highway like I-95 would fall under this category. Macromarketing tends to be used for big global brands that have mega-sized budgets.
Unlike micromarketing, macromarketing focuses on the relationship between the entity (practice in this case) and the buying habits of patients and clients. So, rather than narrowing your thinking to focus on a small, defined audience, micromarketing looks at the marketing process as a whole in broad terms.
Clearly, micromarketing is more on point for aesthetic practices and medspas, due to the nature of your business and the limitations of budget. The bigger you go, the less targeted you will be, so the more you need to spend to get each new patient to come into your practice. If you are just starting out, or thinking about marketing a new location, micromarketing may be way out of your scope.
Defining Your Brand
To determine and define your brand value in the market is a vital first step. Only then can you design a brand strategy and marketing campaign of individual tactics based on your specific goals.
Think of it this way; Your brand is who you are and how you are perceived by patients and clients. Marketing is your messages that you want to convey to them. Branding comes first, then comes marketing. If you don’t know what your brand stands for, you can’t really design a marketing strategy to do it justice.
Your brand is the unique value you offer to your clients that should be communicated to them every time they see, feel, touch, or experience your brand—not just when they get a marketing message. A brand is not just a logo or a mission statement or tagline. It is much more cerebral than that.
If you understand the nuances between branding, plus micro and micromarketing, you will be better able to design promotional campaigns that dovetail with your brand strategy. Listen to the market, your patients and clients, to uncover their values, needs, and criteria to help define your brand’s position. Armed with this knowledge, formulate effective marketing campaigns to communicate your brand’s value through creativity that speaks to your core audience.
Need some help formulating a marketing plan for your practice? Talk to us. Anne@wendylewisco.com
