Turning Towards Success
What moments have you had while building your private practice that were turning points? Those times where something happened and you learned something important about marketing your private practice.
Perhaps you were struggling to get clients and there was a point at which things turned around for you. Or maybe you had a difficult time with a particular marketing strategy you tried.
Often it is at those moments of utter frustration or despair that you have to make the choice: will you continue or will you give up? Will you give into to failure, or turn towards success?
For many counselors and other healing professionals, marketing a private practice can be one of the most challenging things they will ever do. It’s a time consuming and often frustrating process. Only those who hang in there for the long haul succeed. Often there will be many mini "failures" along the way and sometimes there will be big "failures."
I have certainly had my share of frustrations and "failures" along the way and I have seen many of my clients and other practitioners experience the same. What has kept all of us going is the desire to succeed– making a choice to do whatever it takes to get there. This one decision, more than anything else, is the reason for my success. Whenever things don’t go as planned or as I want, I reaffirm my desire to succeed and keep turning towards success.
What is your choice?
Marketing Tips for 2006: New Ezine Article
I just published the December issue of "Enlightened Marketing" for helping and healing professionals marketing a private practice. This month’s article is called, "Marketing Tips for 2006."
5 Key Points I cover in the article:
- Review your Marketing for 2005
- Create a Big Vision and Then Make it Bigger!
- Plan for 2006 Now
- Start off the Year with a New Year’s Offer
- Get Help Where you Need it
You can read the entire article at my marketing a private practice website.
Tighten up That Target Market
John Jantsch on his popular, "Duct Tape Marketing Blog" has a great post called, How Many Prospects Do you Really Need? which essentially addresses the issue of having a specific, narrowly defined target market and how this makes it easier to attract clients.
I spend a lot of time with many of my new clients addressing this issue educating them on why you will actually get more, as opposed to less, clients if you have a clearly defined target market or niche. Sometimes it takes a while, as most counsellors and healing professionals want to include everyone in their target market largely because they fear they will exclude potential clients if they don’t.
John suggests that you figure out how many customers/clients you need a month and then calculate the number of qualified prospects you would need to get your message in front of to acquire the customers/clients you need. His point being that you may not need that many prospects in order to get the required number of customers/clients.
Once you have determined who your qualified prospects are (those that fit your defined target market) you can then focus your attention only on them, sending them information/newsletters and following up with them via phone on a regular basis. John states:
My experience is that when you can get your arms around this very qualified suspect list they become more real, more manageable. When you can start to put names and addresses to your potential clients you can actually begin to see them as clients. You can identify others who could refer you to members of this list. You can afford to start building marketing profiles on each to better personalize your marketing efforts.
If you are still afraid to target your market, by narrowing in a specific population, I suggest you re-think your stance.
