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Marketing Your DPC Practice: Target Audience
There are many different ways to advertise, and what works for one office may not work for another. When developing your marketing plan, the first step is determining who your target audience is. Without defining a target audience, you cannot expect your marketing to have peak success.
The biggest mistake you can make is thinking “my target audience is everyone” because if it is everyone, no one is listening. So, while you may want a variety of patients and want “everyone” as patients, you should not try marketing to “everyone”.
Part of defining the target audience is evaluating what your ideal patient looks like. Is your ideal patient a young married couple with 2-3 kids? Or maybe your ideal patient is a truck driver who is rarely home and likely to utilize remote medicine more heavily than in-office appointments. Or perhaps your ideal patient is the diabetic hypertensive patient who really wants to improve their lifestyle but struggles to keep to a plan.
Although this is not an exhaustive list, some things to consider when determining your target audience include:
- What kind of medical care do I enjoy the most? Do I really enjoy lifestyle medicine? Do I enjoy making personal connections and being that connection for people whose family has all moved away? Do I enjoy pediatric care and watching my patients grow into adulthood? Identifying what you enjoy will help ensure you will find joy and fulfillment in your practice.
- Who is around me? If you want to grow a pediatric practice, but are looking to establish near a retirement community, you might want to look elsewhere or change your target audience. If you are unfamiliar with an area, you can usually obtain general demographic information such as age distribution, gender distribution, average income level, average education level, etc from the local Town or City Hall
- Look at the current customer base. Where are your current, potential patients receiving their care? Look for common characteristics and identify ways you can stand out among the crowd. If you are establishing in an area where there are very few primary care offices, your advertising will be very different than if you are establishing in an area dominated by multiple large well-known medical corporations.
- Are there any medical services you wish to offer that currently are not offered locally? For instance, if you enjoy cosmetics and there are no obvious cosmetic medical practices, that would be a great asset to really set you apart.
- What are the personal characteristics of your target audience? Are they stay-at-home parents? Are they avid outdoors people? Your marketing will be very different if you are trying to reach stay-at-home parents than if you wish to reach avid mountain bikers.
- Where does your local community congregate? Do they all go to churches? Do they congregate on select Facebook Communities? Do they utilize Nextdoor heavily? Is there a local paper that everyone in the neighborhood reads? This information is key to helping you determine where to reach your target audience. For instance, if they are all on Facebook and you are advertising on Nextdoor you will be wasting your time and money.
- Evaluate your decisions. You’ve made it this far into identifying a target audience, but is that target audience large enough to warrant spending money to advertise to? Or are you likely only going to get a couple of patients over several years out of that audience?
With all that, remember that you can have multiple target audiences for different marketing plans/goals - but each marketing plan should be directed at one target audience for the best effect.
For more information, consider checking out this link, How To Create A Great Elevator Pitch
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Marketing Your DPC Practice: Target Audience
There are many different ways to advertise, and what works for one office may not work for another. When developing your marketing plan, the first step is determining who your target audience is. Without defining a target audience, you cannot expect your marketing to have peak success.
The biggest mistake you can make is thinking “my target audience is everyone” because if it is everyone, no one is listening. So, while you may want a variety of patients and want “everyone” as patients, you should not try marketing to “everyone”.
Part of defining the target audience is evaluating what your ideal patient looks like. Is your ideal patient a young married couple with 2-3 kids? Or maybe your ideal patient is a truck driver who is rarely home and likely to utilize remote medicine more heavily than in-office appointments. Or perhaps your ideal patient is the diabetic hypertensive patient who really wants to improve their lifestyle but struggles to keep to a plan.
Although this is not an exhaustive list, some things to consider when determining your target audience include:
- What kind of medical care do I enjoy the most? Do I really enjoy lifestyle medicine? Do I enjoy making personal connections and being that connection for people whose family has all moved away? Do I enjoy pediatric care and watching my patients grow into adulthood? Identifying what you enjoy will help ensure you will find joy and fulfillment in your practice.
- Who is around me? If you want to grow a pediatric practice, but are looking to establish near a retirement community, you might want to look elsewhere or change your target audience. If you are unfamiliar with an area, you can usually obtain general demographic information such as age distribution, gender distribution, average income level, average education level, etc from the local Town or City Hall
- Look at the current customer base. Where are your current, potential patients receiving their care? Look for common characteristics and identify ways you can stand out among the crowd. If you are establishing in an area where there are very few primary care offices, your advertising will be very different than if you are establishing in an area dominated by multiple large well-known medical corporations.
- Are there any medical services you wish to offer that currently are not offered locally? For instance, if you enjoy cosmetics and there are no obvious cosmetic medical practices, that would be a great asset to really set you apart.
- What are the personal characteristics of your target audience? Are they stay-at-home parents? Are they avid outdoors people? Your marketing will be very different if you are trying to reach stay-at-home parents than if you wish to reach avid mountain bikers.
- Where does your local community congregate? Do they all go to churches? Do they congregate on select Facebook Communities? Do they utilize Nextdoor heavily? Is there a local paper that everyone in the neighborhood reads? This information is key to helping you determine where to reach your target audience. For instance, if they are all on Facebook and you are advertising on Nextdoor you will be wasting your time and money.
- Evaluate your decisions. You’ve made it this far into identifying a target audience, but is that target audience large enough to warrant spending money to advertise to? Or are you likely only going to get a couple of patients over several years out of that audience?
With all that, remember that you can have multiple target audiences for different marketing plans/goals - but each marketing plan should be directed at one target audience for the best effect.
For more information, consider checking out this link, How To Create A Great Elevator Pitch